


The Fallacy of Ichor

by caleyedoscope



Category: K-pop, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Space Opera, Blood and Gore, EXO - Freeform, GOT7 - Freeform, M/M, Married Kim Namjoon | RM/Kim Seokjin | Jin, One-Sided Jeon Jungkook/Min Yoongi | Suga, Slow Burn, Winner, alternatively titled "magicians in space", and lots of others - Freeform, blackpink - Freeform, block b - Freeform, iKON - Freeform, magic tattoos, some other groups included are:, yes this is a re-upload
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:37:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 39,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24860131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caleyedoscope/pseuds/caleyedoscope
Summary: Attacked by a ruthless faction in the galaxy known as the Faceless, Yoongi is taken prisoner. Desperate to get him back before he’s killed, Jungkook begins a reckless rescue crusade across the galaxy.But little does he know, Yoongi is already working on an escape plan and he has a few friends he’s bringing along with him that will change the way magic is used forever.New alliances are forged, people fall in love, and they work together to end the tyrannical Faceless organization forever.
Relationships: Jeon Jungkook/Park Jimin, Kim Taehyung | V/Min Yoongi | Suga
Comments: 13
Kudos: 27





	1. Map

**Author's Note:**

> If you feel that you've read this before, you'd be right! I was hacked and all my BTS fic deleted. This is a re-upload of all the current chapters. I WILL finish this, promise. I'm back working on it, albeit slowly. Thank you for your interest~

  
Blood follow'd, but immortal; ichor pure,   
Such as the blest inhabitants of heav'n   
May bleed, nectareous; for the Gods eat not   
Man's food, nor slake as he with sable wine   
Their thirst, thence bloodless and from death exempt.

**_Iliad_ V. 339–342**

—

In his dream, Jungkook saw Yoongi’s tattoos slide across his skin in slow motion. The circles and squares flared a dark red as they spiraled down Yoongi’s arms, called to his fingertips in order to activate the trigger to his spells. A glock, a katana, a grenade…one of them needed to work before it was too late.

They battled a magician, one of the Faceless, a sorcerer affiliated with no particular sector of the galaxy. Jungkook knew this man was one of them because his face was covered with a peach colored mask bearing their mark on each cheek: three concentric circles, evenly spaced. His tattoos were colored a displeasing mix of orange and green, the lines of squares jagged as they slid down his arms, called to the tips of his fingers one by one, wisps of magic weaving into glowing knives, each different sizes and shapes.

It was a familiar, painful memory. Jungkook knew those blades. He knew this moment. It happened just as terribly as he remembered.

The Faceless used knives first, razor thin edges slicing Yoongi’s fingers, marring the skin so the magic couldn’t reach them and then his legs, making him buckle under his own weight. ( _I should have listened to the others, I should have known the Faceless would be better._ )

A second later, Jungkook’s hands were mutilated too, his blood dripping to the ground. He had Forms all the way up to his elbows, circles and squares for all sorts of magic that could help, but with so many cuts to his fingers he could no longer reach them. And he wasn’t a dragon, able to use his lips to speak spells, or a stomper, able to use his feet. ( _I should have activated my shield faster, I should have blocked the knives sooner._ )

Yoongi _was_ a dragon, but it was a recent development and he wasn’t able to pull the spells to his mouth soon enough, wasn’t able to enact the Triggers etched carefully in his perfect Forms. He was in too much pain to focus properly. The Faceless man overpowered them in moments. Jungkook was screaming, unable to move as he watched Yoongi lifted and carried away. ( _I should have brought a real gun. We should have brought Namjoon._ )

It was all Jungkook’s fault. Everything was always his fault and now Yoongi was gone.

—

Jungkook woke.

This too, was something he knew: the sweat dripping down his back, the sting from his wounded hands, defeat at yet another failed attempt to bring Yoongi home. Sixty days of this pain, almost two and a half full galactic cycles. Sixty days too long.

Namjoon sighed from the pilot’s seat.

“Another dream?”

One of Jungkook’s fingers had started to bleed again, the cuts opening under the gauze, bright red blooming in a splotchy pattern. He must have clenched his fists while he slept.

A glance at the monitor in front of him indicated they were about to arrive at Block Station, so he decided it wasn’t worth the trouble to change the bandages. Jaebum would be there to heal the wounds and then Jungkook could sleep, eat, and start his search over from the beginning. _Their_ search.

“You should let Jinyoung help you.”

Jungkook was barely able to hold in a snort.

The board in front of him flashed with a message from the Block; Namjoon must have messaged ahead to have a med team ready. Jungkook’s hands were pretty bad (maybe worse than last time,) but Hoseok’s leg was also in rough shape. Jungkook had stitched the wound relatively well in order to keep the bleeding under control but Hoseok needed a healer if he ever wanted to walk again.

“I don’t need Jinyoung’s dream spells. Stop worrying about me and start worrying about Jin and how you’re going to explain the gaping hole in his favorite ship.”

Namjoon scoffed. “It’s barely a scratch.”

“That was your excuse after you crashed _Wings_ into an asteroid. I don’t remember that going well for you.”

“The asteroid hit _me._ ”

Jungkook pushed himself out of his seat. “Whatever.”

“That’s ‘whatever, _Captain_.’ You know the protocol while we’re on board. It does not go away just because we’re about to dock. Go check on Hoseok if you aren’t going to curb the attitude. Everything here is fine.”

He let Namjoon’s tone brush by him. Post-mission they always said a lot of things they didn’t mean and everyone let it slide—they were too exhausted and homesick to let it bother them every single time. The metal floor of the bridge clanked as Jungkook walked out of it, old steel ready to give way under his feet, only holding his weight because of Seokjin’s wards.

Maybe, once they did land, Jungkook would stick around to watch Seokjin verbally rip out Namjoon’s heart; that they were married only made their fighting more spectacular. Jungkook might even forget the pain in his hands for a little while. He might even manage a smile.

Honestly, though, the _Butterfly_ was a piece of junk and in need of a major overhaul. It was a small ship not meant for long space travel. The bulkheads were blackened with scars from magic and the rusted walkways littered with burn holes. It was tiny and cramped and Jungkook would never admit it to Seokjin’s face (because this ship was his baby,) but he was glad it had reached the point of no return. Hopefully, Seokjin had finished overseeing the repairs to _Wings_ , and their search for Yoongi could begin in earnest: with all of them.

Jungkook opened the hatch to the bunks and dropped down through it. Hoseok had his leg elevated and he looked paler than he had an hour ago, a sheen of sweat across his skin. His teeth were chattering, despite the bunks being right next to the engine and all the blankets in the ship piled on him.

They’d already given him the last dose of painkillers in their first aid kit so Jungkook settled for adjusting Hoseok’s pillow and shooting him a smile. Hoseok had always said he liked Jungkook’s smile.

“We’re really close.”

“I know. You can tell Namjoon to stop fretting. They’ll wave the wound away once we get there.”

Not quite a wave, but the doctors employed by the Block were very good and wounds were their specialties. They could fix almost everything, so long as their patients weren’t already dead. They’d tried reviving people already—tried and failed and now they were here.

Death had been the beginning of it all.

The Block had all sorts of magical experts, all happy to go about their trading business and keep this sector of the galaxy spinning merrily: Solid magic experts, Liquid magic experts, and even some Spacious magic experts. And within those experts were even more refined specialists—Park Jinyoung, who had mastered controlling dreams; Park Kyung, who could integrate and technology with magic, and Namjoon, who had created the bulletproof tattoo that made them nearly untouchable.

There had also been a magician (long before Jungkook had arrived on the Block) who’d had the ability to put ideas in people’s minds and move their hearts. But he was dead, kidnapped up by the Faceless, his tattoos peeled from his skin in order to further their quest for Soul magic. They’d sent the magician’s body back in a chest full of gold, as if that could replace the life he’d lived.

No one was over it. No one wanted to be over it. Instead of avoiding the Faceless like they had before and skirting around them when detected, ships from the Block engaged. They fought. They usually lost. Over and over, their tattoos slashed, their bones broken, their ships crippled. It was getting expensive. It was getting old.

They should have left it alone. Had Jungkook enough sway he would have told them so, but he was too new, despite how much Yoongi and Namjoon seemed to trust him. Maybe if they hadn’t started skirmishing with every Faceless ship they encountered their bulletproof skin wouldn’t have been noticed. No one would have thought twice about a few people with ink that could deflect any weapon. No one would have noticed Yoongi’s uncanny ability to draw tattoos that always worked. No one would have noticed how Namjoon made their little group of sorcerers mesh perfectly together. No one would have noticed their perfect flying formations and maybe no one would have thought they might be using Soul magic to do all that.

Maybe no one would have thought about kidnapping Yoongi and skinning him alive—if indeed they’d done that yet. Namjoon didn’t think so because they hadn’t found Yoongi’s body yet and so they had hope…hope that the Faceless were keeping Yoongi alive, to whatever end that meant.

Jungkook wiped at Hoseok’s brow and switched out the empty water bottle for a new one.

“Go make sure Namjoon doesn’t ruin the other side of the ship pulling into the Block,” Hoseok said.

Jungkook laughed. “Okay. Comm if you need anything.”

Truthfully, Namjoon wasn’t a _bad_ pilot. His tattoos were emergency only, but they were enough to get them out of trouble earlier and the magic Seokjin had imbued into the ship had kept them safe. But Namjoon was only flying because Jungkook’s tattoos were slashed and thus rendered useless; Jungkook was the best pilot on the Block and everyone knew it. Jungkook was the best at pretty much everything…except keeping Yoongi safe.

“They’ve got a med team waiting,” Namjoon said, once Jungkook had hauled himself up onto the walkway and back into the cockpit.

“Good. He’s worse than he was a few hours ago.”

He can see the Block looming in front of them now, through the thick viewer at the front of the ship, the spidering crack down the middle distorting the view a little. The only reason the vacuum of space wasn’t sucking them out of it was because of Seokjin.

The Block itself was full of not only Seokjin’s spells but also those of the Block’s commander Woo Jiho and a whole hose of magical engineers. It was a massive trading hub only possible due to their genius. Its axis was slightly tilted, and not really one space station but rather an amalgamation of several, added on and welded together over the years, all of them joined to the terminal in the center.

Namjoon headed for it now, sliding easily around the other ships, past the colorfully painted bases and glowing wards on the walkways connecting them. “Some of those are new,” Namjoon said, frowning. “I hope nothing happened.”

Jiho liked to make improvements for the fun of it, from major overhauls to cosmetic enhancements. He’d had come up with the idea of magicking the color of the metal in the main docking bay with signs. He’d had Namjoon do it with his color spells so big block letters reading **DOCK HERE FOR INSPECTION, ASSHOLES** was all that was visible from any anchored ship. The vivid red warning was in Italian today, though even as Jungkook looked on it flickered into Korean. It was the best welcome mat in the entire galaxy.

Namjoon powered the ship down as they waited for the bay to pressurize and oxygen to flood it. He had a stupid grin on his face that Jungkook knew wasn’t going to last.

“Home sweet home.”

They had to lift Hoseok between them to get him standing and then they hitched him up onto Jungkook’s back. The second the hatch opened the med team was there, and behind them, Jaebum. Namjoon must have really stressed the urgency of their situation for him to come all the way down here.

Jaebum hadn’t been on the Block as long as Namjoon, but he still managed to give him an icy glare and not look guilty about it. “If you had arrived a _day later_.”

“That’s why we hurried. We weren’t exactly working with the usual resources.”

Jungkook wiggled his bandages fingers in explanation. Jaebum didn’t respond, already bending down to inspect Hoseok’s wound as they walked out of sight.

Jungkook leaned back against the wall, grinning as Namjoon brushed dirt from his pants and ran fingers through his hair. Where was Jungkook’s imager? He should record this for posterity. And blackmail. And to show Yoongi, if they ever found him alive, who appreciated Namjoon and Seokjin bickering as much as the next person.

The docking bay sign changed from Korean to French and then flickered between Japanese and Farsi every few seconds. Namjoon frowned, brushing his fingers over it.

“Weird. They aren’t supposed to cycle that quickly.” It morphed to English. “That’s not spelled right.”

Namjoon used the wall like a keyboard, his tattoos flying up and down his arms as he called them, pressing spell after spell into the metal until the paint was brighter and back in Korean, at least for now. “Better,” he nodded.

“You should really just stick to spells,” Jungkook said, “instead of flying.” The sign would have taken anyone else forever to fix. It would have taken Jungkook _at least_ an hour, if only to check all the translations.

“We’re married,” Namjoon said, “Jin’s used to this.”

“He’s going to make you sleep out here once he sees the damage.”

“I was only flying because you couldn’t. Besides, he already knows something’s wrong since we didn’t just jump past all of Jiho’s mines and approached like a normal merchant. Don’t sound so excited about my imminent banishment…not that I actually think that’ll happen. It’s not like it will affect you at all.”

Jungkook grinned. “If the two of you aren’t in the same room, it means the rest of us don’t have to listen to you making him scream.”

“If he makes me sleep out here it will only make the inevitable screaming louder. Stop rubbing this in; remember who puts credits into your account every week.”

Jungkook was saved from having to respond to that because there was a thump, a clang, and Seokjin emerged from a hatch, running full tilt towards them. There was a grease smudge on his cheek and he was half buttoned into his engineer overalls. Jungkook would be an idiot if he thought Seokjin welcoming them back outfitted like that was a coincidence; Namjoon never shut up about how much he loved it.

“Baby!”

And thus it had arrived: a denouement as spectacular as Jungkook had imagined.

Seokjin ran right past Namjoon and plastered himself to the side of his ship, Namjoon covering his heart in mock horror. His dimples were still showing, though, so he had at least been expecting that.

“Hi, baby, my gorgeous _Butterfly._ My favorite ship. Look at you, all safe and sound. I knew you would be.”

Jungkook had once asked why Seokjin ran to his ships first, before the crew, before his husband. “If my ship is safe,” Seokjin had answered, “than so is Namjoon.” If his metal holds, and his magic, then no one would die. No one would be hurt. At least, not in a space battle. Hoseok’s leg getting slashed on that near uninhabitable planet was a different matter entirely.

“Everything intact, everything nice and…”

Seokjin stopped as he got a good look at the side of the _Butterfly_ sporting the gigantic burn, metal twisted, his magic keeping the insides from spilling out. The wards were almost completely gone and Seokjin’s sanity was probably not far to follow. Jungkook bit the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning.

“ _What is that?_ Kim Namjoon, were you _piloting my ship_? _”_

“It was just a tiny little mishap,” Namjoon said, “not a big deal.”

“That isn’t _tiny_!”

The dimples falter, just a little. “You’ll notice we’re all alive.”

“ _Butterfly_ , my love, what has he done to you? _”_

“I see we’re going to have to move beyond my misnomer to get anywhere with this conversation. Or say proper hellos. Or give kisses?”

The dimples disappeared entirely as Seokjin glared.

“Jin, it’s not what you think, I swear!”

The burn in Jungkook’s hands subsided a little at he watched them but his heart ached for the times when Yoongi had been there waiting as well, for the little grins they shared and the eye-rolling that went back and forth.

Sixty days too long.

“Yo.”

Jungkook turned around in time to see Yugyeom, one of the Block’s Watchers and also one of Jungkook’s close friends, emerge into the hangar. His eyes went straight to **DOCK HERE FOR INSPECTION, ASSHOLES** and he grinned. “He fixed it already?”

Jungkook shrugged. “Namjoon doesn’t like to waste time.”

They forewent their usual back slapping hand shake because of Jungkook’s wounds. Yugyeom’s eyes flicked down to them and Jungkook could see the flash of concern on his face before it was tucked away.

“C’mon. You’re just in time. We’ve found a lead.”

The center station of the Block was a hub of activity. It was always crowded, always bustling with new shipments of goods. Jiho didn’t allow anything to be sold unless it was either traded or purchased from one of his captains and he had eyes and ears all over the Block to make sure the rule was enforced. Jungkook had been one of those people for him, before Yoongi had found him and took him to meet Namjoon.

Jungkook distinctly remembered the first time he’s stepped into the winding corridor that was the Block’s main market. It was a good thirty meters wide at its bottom, which allowed for lots of foot traffic, shops carved into his base or carts stuck to the side, bulging with trinkets. But the walls towered and each floor cut back into itself a little bit more. Some were reachable by lifts and some had steep staircases allowing access. Farther in, zip lines appeared, following the corridor as it curled around itself, stretching to new pathways that had been slashed into the metal and fortified with magic. And there were always magicians floating in the air, either ones being paid to transport people and goods, or ones just here to keep an eye on things.

Today, the merchants seemed pushier than usual, a little more anxious to sell and buy, and Jungkook couldn’t hold back the trader in him.

“Was there a good haul?”

“Yes, and that is source of our lead. You won’t even believe it, man. Seungyoon scored an entire Faceless ship, precisely preserved, from before the war. Right from underneath the Dragon’s nose.”

Jungkook stopped short. _“What?_ ”

“No joke. It was fully intact and stocked. Faceless weapons and masks and wares, right down to the goddamn ship manuals. There were _ten crates_ of tattoo ink. The good stuff.”

“Holy shit.”

Pre-war ships were rare. The Faceless had been beaten almost a decade ago, at the height of their power, and most everything from their reign of terror destroyed by the Alliance. They’d left behind a few believers, but most everyone ignored them now, except for those that still lost magicians to them, like the Block. To have discovered a ship and get it before the Dragon was nothing short of a miracle.

“Jiho’s beside himself with glee.”

“So why are the merchants in an uproar? Is Seungyoon actually selling anything?”

“Maybe. We need to catalogue it all, and I think Jiho’s going to buy most of it, aside from his usual cut of goods. And then the other captains are probably going to want dibs. I mean, that’s if the Dragon doesn’t come and shoot us out of the sky first.”

“Right.”

Yoongi would want some of the ink. Jungkook’s going to have to make sure he got some, if Namjoon didn’t take it all first. He was, after all, a captain, thought he didn’t like to be called that unless they were in the middle of a battle.

“Seokjin’s been drooling at the thought of getting to look at the ship’s circuitry and spell integration.”

Jungkook could well imagine. In fact, he rather suspected Seokjin would overlook Namjoon’s piloting disaster in favor of telling him about this find. They would be up here to talk to Jiho much sooner than Jungkook had originally thought. “What lead was there?“

“Dude,” Yugyeom said, “you just have to see it.”

They took a lift to the top floor of the market and then made for a hatch and a corridor that was only for Jiho’s staff and his captains. His security was outside as usual, and they gave Jungkook a wave once they got a good look at his face.

“Glad you’re alright,” one of them said. Jungkook couldn’t remember his name. “Heard you had a close call.”

“Nothing we haven’t faced before. But thanks.”

There were a few other people in the corridor but Yugyeom and Jungkook were mostly ignored aside from a few friendly greetings. They headed to Jiho’s personal hangar bay via a shuttle that was guided with magic, and in moments they arrived. Jungkook couldn’t get into the bay fast enough.

The Faceless ship was tiny. It was totally dwarfed by everything there, including Seungyoon’s ship, still docked beside it, protective spells encasing it, even as his crew and some of Jiho’s moved in and out with goods. It was a smart defensive move until they could determine for sure that it wasn’t rigged.

Involuntarily, Jungkook’s insides twisted. Even surrounded by friends and allies, the sight of the smooth, peach colored metal set his heart racing. He remembered a moment too late that his hands were injured, wincing as he clenched them and reopened more cuts.

“You okay?”

Jungkook took a deep breath. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Just—wow. They’ve only ever been shooting at me, you know?”

Yugyeom did. They all did, and he squeezed Jungkook’s shoulder. “Come see what they found. Jiho’s keeping it quiet but he thought you should know before he makes any announcements. _If_ he makes any.”

There was an observation room off to one side, enchanted glass separating it from the hangar bay. Jungkook felt moderately more secure once they were inside and his breath came easier.

Jiho was sitting at a table, his thinking face on and Mino was next to him, both of them staring at the wall. For a second, Jungkook thought they’d both tinted their hair blue before he realized it was just light being cast from a holographic projector. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen actual tech in use without some sort of magical modification and it was fascinating.

“I’ll go get Jaebum,” Yugyeom said, “see if he’s done stabilizing Hoseok.”

“Where’s Namjoon?” Jiho didn’t look up at them.

“Placating Seokjin’s wrath. But they should be up here momentarily, I would imagine.” Jungkook squinted a the fuzzy projection on the wall. “What is that? It looks like a map.”

He couldn’t make sense of it, at first. It looked like every other map of the galaxy: Dragon Sector, Polaris Sector, Alliance Sector, the Neutral rings. The Center. Uncharted Space. But upon further inspection, there were things marked that Jungkook didn’t recognize. Black dots and squares scattered across the galaxy in varying sizes with no regard for territorial sector lines. Even as Jungkook watched some of them were being painted over with Mino’s magical red Xs.

“What are they?”

But he knew. He put the pieces of the puzzle together in his head before Jiho said it out loud.

“Bases,” Jiho said.

“Bases the Faceless used during the war,” Mino added.

_What a find_.

“We’re crossing off the ones we know are destroyed or have already been found but that still leaves us with twelve. Twelve bases probably still used. Places where they live. Places where they plan. Places where they probably keep prisoners. Places for us to search.”

Twelve bases full of potential for finding Yoongi.

“That sounds a little too good to be true.”

Namjoon had joined them. Seokjin was right behind him, a fresh hickey on his neck and look on his face that meant Jungkook ought to sit so he could be lectured.

Jungkook found a chair.

“ _Honestly,”_ Seokjin sighed. “When Namjoon said he’d only been piloting because your tattoos were ruined _again…_ do you even know what self preservation means? What is this? The fifth time?”

“Seventh,” Jungkook corrected, before realizing he probably shouldn’t have said anything at all. But he was saved from further chastisement because Jaebum arrived and pushed Seokjin out of the way.

“How is Hoseok?”

“Stable and healing. He’ll be fine by tonight. Give me your hands.”

“You’re a miracle worker,” Jungkook said, and Jaebum patted his knee.

“I can’t be the only one that thinks this whole thing is weird,” Namjoon said. He’d gone to stand closer to the wall, eyebrow raised. “I mean what are the odds that you _just happen_ to find a fully intact Faceless ship carrying a map we desperately need?”

Jaebum carefully unwrapped Jungkook’s hands, the green circles on his arms bumping past the triangles and sliding to his fingertips. Yoongi had been the one to carefully plan and then ink the healing circles onto Jaebum’s skin. It had been the first record of a successful integration of ten healing tattoos all at the same time.

“We didn’t randomly find it,” Mino said. “Seungyoon and I have been tracking leads for months. We’ve _all_ been tracking down leads. None of this is sudden.”

“We’ve paid for this lead,” Jungkook added, after he was sure no one was going to say anything else, “with body parts and ships and lives. We’ve been scouring this sector for clues. It’s about time we finally found something— _ow._ ”

“Hold still,” Jaebum clicked his tongue.

The razor thin cuts were knitting themselves back together, the broken lines of Jungkook’s blue squares and circles re-forming and he could feel the thrum of their magic beginning to build in him again.

“I agree,” Jiho said, “especially since it was the Dragon that was searching for this before Seungyoon was aware it existed. The Faceless aren’t stupid enough to touch anything the Dragon wants.”

“And we are?” Namjoon asked, incredulous.

A fair point. But Jiho and the Dragon had a profitable understanding between them that might take precedence over any irritation. If they were lucky.

“I can handle the Dragon, don’t worry about that.”

“I’m a little worried,” Namjoon frowned, “we need the map but not the ship. We could just give it back to him and pretend the map wasn’t on there. An unscheduled visit from the Dragon is bad for business.”

“A visit from him after stealing his prize is inevitable,” Jiho corrected, “but you are right about the ship.”

“I’m willing to take a hit in profits if it means hurting the Faceless,” Mino said, “if it means getting justice for the people we’ve lost.”

“If it means finding Yoongi,” Jungkook added, through clenched teeth. His fingers were burning, but he could tell Jaebum was almost done. Tattoo repair took twice as long as any other healing.

“I’m confident in my ability to broker a deal with the Dragon and get him off our backs. This isn’t the first time we’ve found something that he wanted and we both came out of those other encounters quite happy. So for now, we catalogue everything and start intense research on those twelve bases. See if we can’t cross any more off. We don’t want them to get wind of our plans and move any sensitive information to uncharted space.”

Or to move people. They don’t want the Faceless to know their positions might be compromised and move Yoongi to a place with no map at all. Then the Block would be back to square one.

There was a moment of silence as everyone watched the last of Jungkook’s cuts heal themselves under Jaebum’s direction, each lost in their own thoughts. And then the pain was gone and Jungkook’s connection to his magic was back.

It was with relish that he moved his tattoos, checking to be sure each blue square of solid magic worked: a handgun Namjoon had drawn and Yoongi had inked, bombs packed with fire that he could lob into the air. He even checked his tattoos that hadn’t been slashed, just to be safe. Namjoon reached out to squeeze his shoulder, pleased.

The Block’s golden boy was back.

“Okay,” Jiho said, “let’s get to work.”


	2. Blood

Yoongi’s tattoos were ruined.

His fingers were scarred, half the skin ripped off and only faint traces of ink left visible. The wounds had long since healed over, but a phantom pain persisted whenever he forgot they weren’t there and he tried to use a spell. The Faceless had been thorough. Yoongi didn’t think they knew he was a fledgling Dragon, otherwise his lips would have been cut as well, but they hadn’t taken any chances. All of his tattoos had been mutilated in some manner and the only way he’d get any of them back (without having to ink them all over again) would be to find a magical healer that could mend their shapes and the skin simultaneously.

But at least he wasn’t dead. Yoongi hadn’t been about to let them take Jungkook. He saw it, in that Faceless’ eyes, and had forgone making his bulletproof shield to draw their attention to him and leave Jungkook alone.

Yoongi did not regret it for a second.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been in the prison camp. He hand’t been able to move when he’d first arrived. Days and nights had blended together as his wounds had healed over. By the time he was conscious, he’d been hustled out of his cell, his feet shackled and a Faceless guard had brought him out into the main area of the prison.

It was unbearable.

But it wasn’t a particularly cold prison—Yoongi had suffered through worse temperatures in the far reaches of space. They were fed regularly, though the food was tasteless, and given ample time to sleep and wash themselves. There weren’t even any rodents or bugs.

No, it wasn’t the prison itself that was unbearable. It was the work. Not because it was hard or exhausting or difficult, but because using his talent to design tattoos for the Faceless made Yoongi sick to his stomach.

Of course, without his own magic to help him and without knowing the recipients of each Form, his designs were generic and lack luster. Namjoon would be astonished at the simplicity, honestly. But the Faceless didn’t seem to care.

They’d made Yoongi draw Solid magic the first day they’d hauled him from this cell. A Faceless soldier had stood over him and watched him draw square after square, measuring the width of his lines, the angles of his corners. Then, they’d made him draw the trigger.

Triggers were tricky without knowing anything about the person that would be utilizing the tattoos. Yoongi was good at matching people with triggers. Seokjin had wanted an extra, magical arm to help with mechanical work and Yoongi had spent weeks carefully illustrating a hand inside a Solid square until he had one he knew would work. He’d drawn Jaebum’s healing tattoos, spending hours talking with him about sickness and blood and the way a body works, circles curled together on Jaebum’s arm like connected swirls rather than separate shapes. He’d done Jungkook’s weaponry too, guns and bombs that took only seconds to form on the tips of Jungkook’s fingers, perfect for the Block’s golden boy.

The second day in prison he moved to liquid magic. His circles were impeccable and the Faceless seemed impressed. They made him work on elemental triggers once they were satisfied, drawing tiny flames in circles, or waves of water. He drew planets for gravitational control and lightning to spark energy.

The third day, Yoongi expected to be told to draw triangles for Spacious magic, but it never happened. One could not draw mind magic blindly, and the Faceless knew that. It had to be tailored exactly. Yoongi, for all his skill, had only managed to successfully ink one Spacious tattoo but a fat lot of good that had done because that magician was dead now.

So Yoongi worked as he was directed, going back and forth between Solid and Liquid Forms and drawing generic weapons and elements. He scratched lines in his cell to count the days he was there, starting from when he’d first become conscious, all while trying to figure out how the hell he was going to escape.

He didn’t doubt for a second that the Block was trying to find him, but the galaxy was enormous and for all Yoongi knew, he was in uncharted space. He couldn’t rely on anyone to get him out of this mess which meant he needed to find his own way to escape.

And, if he could swing it, he’d like to free all the other prisoners, too.

It wasn’t going to be easy. Prisoners’ hands were kept carefully tied behind their backs in their cells and cuffed to the tables in the work room so as to be able to draw on paper but not on any body parts. They were evenly spaced at their stations so they couldn’t tattoo one another and only ever given brushes and paint, just in case one of them broke a hand free and tried to stick the pointy end of a pen or pencil into something.

Most of the prisoners were drawing, but a few were making tattoo machines and others carefully measuring ingredients for ink.

Yoongi had the beginnings of an escape plan worked out, one he’d meticulously been cultivating since day one of his imprisonment. If he could get a tattoo gun he would be able to fashion himself a weapon, even if his hands were tied. He was known for being one of the bulletproof magicians, for being quick with his fingers, and skilled in drawing tattoos, but very few people knew he’d been working towards Dragon status. His lips were intact and given enough time, he could make something work.

This need was filled by the prisoner sitting next to him during the day: Kim Taehyung. He’d been painstakingly assembling a tattoo machine in his cell with pilfered parts from his daily work. He was doing it with his hands restrained but he assured Yoongi that after putting tattoo machines together for the five cycles he’d been in this place, he could build them in his sleep. Normally, Yoongi would be wary of boasting but there was something about Taehyung’s face and his smile and general existence that made Yoongi trust him. He was going to decorate Taehyung with the best tattoos in the galaxy after they escaped. And maybe give him a hug. Yoongi was also wary of hugs but Taehyung looked like he’d know just the right way to give them.

So Yoongi just needed some decent ink, a believable distraction, and a whole boatload of luck. Taehyung could get the parts without the Faceless noticing, because some were good and some were bad, and there were always parts left over in order to get the best machines. But ink was different. Ink had a very specific recipe and ingredients that were carefully measured. It was going to be a lot harder to take some of that without the Faceless noticing.

Yoongi spent an entire cycle working through that but didn’t come up with an answer until he scratched sixty-one lines into his metal cell, though it had felt more like he’d scratched six hundred and one lines.

He was drawing a bow and arrow in a Solid square, thinking that if he was doing this for Jungkook he’d make the fletching of the arrow a little wider and the point at the end something that could explode, when the only door to the room burst open and two Faceless guards marched in a new prisoner.

Yoongi knew from experience that he shouldn’t stop working, but he couldn’t help pausing because the boy they dragged in had pink hair, just as vibrant as Yoongi’s mint, though granted it had faded without Namjoon’s color magic to keep the shade steady.

It was obviously pure chance, but they sat him down at the empty ink making station next to Yoongi and shackled him there. His fingers were scabbed over and scarred and there weren’t any shapes sliced through that Yoongi could see, but that didn’t mean anything. His hands were useless like that. “Mix!” one of the guards barked.

Yoongi went back to his work before the guards could notice he had stopped but he watched out of the corner of his eye. The kid was good, measuring ingredients and pigment carefully, stirring at all the right times. But there wasn’t anything particularly unique about the way he did it.

 _I wonder why they took him_.

Yoongi was there because he was bulletproof, Taehyung for his clever crafting. At the table in front of them were others, people that had managed to make magic change a person’s physical appearance, people that had managed to create never before seen weapons from tattoos, and people that whip up top grade ink in a flash.

All of them in pursuit of Soul magic for the Faceless.

That had always been their quest. Since the beginning of the war and their desire of domination, the Faceless had searched unceasingly for the Form that would allow for the use of Soul magic.

It was a rumor, a story from the discovery of magic. _It’s the most powerful. You can control a person entirely with Soul magic, you can combine Solid and Liquid and Spacious magic with it, you can make a person with no magical talent the most powerful magician of all_. Perhaps most enticing out of all the theories was that Soul magic could be used to revive dead tattoos.

Every magician had one or two dead tattoos. Yoongi’s arms held a few, unmoving healing circles with different triggers he’d inked in order to draw healing magic out of himself. But none of them had worked. He wasn’t meant to be a healer but he was endlessly curious as to whether or not Soul magic would indeed force a change. There wasn’t a magician in the galaxy that didn’t dream of being more powerful…dare he say the _most_ powerful.

“What’s your name?” Yoongi asked, after the guards—satisfied with the kid’s concoctions—finally walked away.

To his credit, the kid spoke out of the side of his mouth and answered as he continued to stir. “Park Jimin.”

“Where are you from, Jimin?”

“Polaris. At the edge of the galaxy core.”

There weren’t many left in Polaris allowed to live that close to the edge of the sector. After the war, they’d decided keeping their citizens close to the capital planet was best, leaving the outer parts full of their military.

“I’m from the Dragon Sector.”

Jimin’s eyes flicked to Yoongi’s hands and then to his hair. Phantom pain spiked in Yoongi’s finger tips and he tried not to wince. “I’ve heard about you. Min Yoongi. One of the bulletproof.”

Yoongi nodded, falling silent at guards came by to check his work, shuffle the papers he’d already filled with drawings, and replace them with the more blank sheets. He didn’t like to draw his tattoos too big. The bigger the drawing, the more detail he had to add to them, and the better they would work.

“How did they get you?” Jimin sounded confused.

“I attacked them,” Yoongi admitted, “with—“ Jungkook’s face flashed in Yoongi’s mind and he swallowed, “we weren’t prepared. We didn’t have enough people. You?”

“My parents own an ink shop.”

An ink shop at the edge of the Polaris Sector would be easy pickings for the Faceless. “I’m sorry.”

The guards started to roam back and forth again, so that was the end of their conversation for the day. Park Jimin glared at them whenever they walked by, and Yoongi could see the anger and hatred in every flick of Jimin’s wrist, every huff of his breath. It was the sort of hatred you couldn’t really fake, a sort of hatred Yoongi knew and recognized and understood.

Yoongi glanced at Taehyung, eyebrow raised, wondering if he’d seen it too. Taehyung nodded, eyes sparkling, lips curling in a little smile. Finally. They could use Park Jimin.

There must be something more to him, something beneath his careful mixing of ingredients that made him special, otherwise he wouldn’t be here at all.

Night brought an answer. They were given dinner, worked for several more hours, given time to wash, and then escorted back to their cells. But Yoongi’s was a little different this evening. Another mattress had been added, another pot for refuse situated on the floor.

Park Jimin was in Yoongi’s cell.

They were chained on opposite sides, unable to reach each other, but definitely close enough to be able to talk without having to raise their voices. The Faceless obviously didn’t think Jimin was much of a threat. Yoongi could use that.

“So what _else_ can you do?”

“What?”

Yoongi was good at reading people; he always had been. Jimin couldn’t have been more obvious if he’d tried. _I can’t let anyone find out_ , was written all over his face.

“Come on, kid,” Yoongi coaxed, “a shop at the edge of Polaris might be tantalizing, easy prey for the Faceless but yours certainly isn’t the only one. What’s different about you?”

“Maybe they meant to take someone else.”

“That’s not what your expression tells me. I was a smuggler, before Jiho took me in and made me into a trader. I’ve made a living recognizing people’s lies and secrets. So I’m going to ask again and you’re going to be honest. What is it that makes you special, Park Jimin?”

Jimin frowned. “Why do you care?”

A fair question. “I care because Taehyung and I need an ink mixer for our escape plan.”

That immediately interested him, as Yoongi knew it would. “Escape plan?”

Yoongi grinned. “I’m a fledgling Dragon.”

Jimin’s eyes went straight to Yoongi’s unmarred mouth and Yoongi watched with satisfaction as the implications dawned on Jimin’s face. “They don’t know.”

“Unfortunately, all of my tattoos are ruined. But that doesn’t rule out me making new ones, at least until I can find a healer. Taehyung is assembling me a tattoo gun. All we need now is a way to get ink. You’re the first person that’s come through here that seemed to know the recipe well enough to do it with your hands tied behind your back.”

The deceitful expression on Jimin’s face lingered a moment more before it was replaced by something else—trust, Yoongi thought—and the newbie gave in to the promise of freedom, quite predictably.

“I don’t need a recipe.”

Yoongi blinked. “What?”

“I mean, I know it. I can do it. But I can make working, magical ink out of anything.”

For a moment, Yoongi stopped breathing. “Anything?”

“Yes. No one knew, but our ink was famous because I could tailor it to people, because I didn’t need special ingredients to make the end result high quality.”

It was borderline suspicious, honestly, but now was not the time to dwell on that. “For instance?”

Jimin gave him a smile. “Any sort of powder for thickness, even dirt. Pigment if you want it, but it’s not necessary. Water or oil, to keep it from drying out too much, and blood. _My_ blood, specifically, though I’ve never really tried anyone else’s.”

 _Damn_. Yoongi had heard rumors of blood ink but he’d never encountered it until now, which was saying something, because he’d been to some of the most remote corners of the galaxy. “So you could theoretically like…bleed onto the floor, mix in some water and boom! Immediate ink?”

“It’s the iron in my blood,” Jimin said, “at least, that’s what my parents think. Something about it allows for substitution of the actual metals in the normal ink.”

“And that’s _it_? For any sort of tattoo?”

Tattoo ink usually had several ingredients, from iron to chromium, and others, depending on the sort of tattoo it would be making. Ash was sometimes added for fire tattoos or steel for weapons. Yoongi had once used volcanic rock to allow for the creation of magma. To only need three or four ingredients to make _any_ tattoo work…

“That’s it,” Jimin nodded.

Yoongi _could not believe_ his luck. Namjoon would want to do so many experiments. Jungkook—Jungkook would want to try and make ink from his own blood. Jungkook always wanted to try everything.

“Helpful?” Jimin asked.

The wheels in Yoongi’s mind were spinning frantically. They were going to escape. It had taken far longer than he would have liked for all of the pieces to assemble but finally, finally he thought he could make this work.

Taehyung was going to be ecstatic. Taehyung was going to _smile_. Yoongi loved making him smile.

“Jimin,” he said, feeling excited for the first time since he’d arrived, “you are _exactly_ what we need.”

—

The only certain thing concerning their location was that this prison was on a planet. Space travel had a very distinct feeling to it, as did recycled oxygen and artificial gravity. But they wouldn’t be able to pilot a ship without the exact tattoos to activate it and neither did they know the kind of defense they’d face as they tried to leave. And then they’d have to deal with plotting a course—they could only hope they weren’t in an uncharted section of the galaxy.

But one thing at a time.

Taehyung had almost completed the gun and Yoongi was trying to figure out how to create a big enough distraction in order for the guards to be busy long enough to mark his skin.

They couldn’t do it during labor hours because there were too many guards. Night would be easier for a getaway but harder to coordinate in locked cells, so that left meals as the best time for an escape.

“Can we get in a fight?” Taehyung suggested. They were whispering back and forth every time the guards went to the opposite side of the work room.

“How? Our hands would still be tied. A verbal fight isn’t going to be a big enough commotion.” Yoongi jiggled a chain. “I can break these with my magic,” he said, “but I need the time to tattoo myself. We need _huge_ distraction, something that will make the guards panic.”

Jimin coughed to get their attention. “The chains.”

Yoongi frowned. “What?”

“We need to pretend that they’re too tight, maybe that they’re pinching or causing pain, make it seem like an emergency. They want us to be able to work. So if we can pretend that something is wrong they should un-cuff us to try and fix it. I don’t think they have enough prisoners for us to be expendable, just yet.”

Yoongi _could not_ believe his luck.

“Leave it to me,” Taehyung said, “I used to know an actor.”

“Used to know,” Yoongi snorted. What use was there in knowing an actor? It would be better if Taehyung was one. Stars, he was going to get along so well with Jungkook . “I guess I’ll have to trust you.”

“If my hands weren’t tied,” Taehyung said, calmly, “I would smack you.”

“You would try.”

—

It took Taehyung a week after Jimin arrived to finish the tattoo gun. He’d made it half the size of a normal one and it had been easy to pass off to Yoongi while standing in line for their tasteless protein gruel. Their fingertips had brushed and sent tingles racing down Yoongi’s spine.

The next morning they’d woken early and Jimin had mixed his blood with dirt and water before painstakingly dripping it into the tiny holder in the gun. Yoongi gave him verbal direction for good aim; they couldn’t waste a single drop. Jimin had plugged the hole and then slid the gun across the floor to Yoongi and it was tucked securely into Yoongi’s shoe.

Now, to cause a distraction.

The beauty of tattoo magic was that he could ink anywhere, even the bottom of his foot, and as soon as he activated the Trigger it would slide up his body to the tips of his fingers, ready to fire.

The easiest part of his body to reach, while his hands were tied behind him, was his heel. He’d practiced drawing the Form he’d chosen for days: one the knives he’d designed for Seokjin. He already knew the design would work so it was an easy choice. Once activated, Yoongi would be able to break through his handcuffs easily. Inking another tattoo on himself after that would take him only moments, and he could get the second tattoo they’d need on his skin: one of Jungkook’s bombs. Once pulled from his skin he could drop it into his hand and lob it into the air and it would still explode, unlike a gun which required magic from his fingers in order to fire.

An explosion would technically give him enough time to free Taehyung, Jimin, and the others. A few of the other prisoners had assured Yoongi (passed up and down the lines for food in hurried whispers) that they were good combatants and could disarm the remaining guards with no problems.

It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it was as good as they were going to get. Yoongi was satisfied with it. Two weapons made him much more confident, even if he would prefer to re-draw the tattoos that made him bulletproof. It would be terribly useful right about now, but it wouldn’t work without Namjoon there to anchor the spell back to his own. It would have to wait.

The real test would be whatever lay through the doors. There was no way to tell and no way to prepare so they’d just have to hope it was something they could handle. So now, it was just a question of what, out of the things they could not control, would go wrong.

Five seconds later, Yoongi discovered that absolutely everything could go wrong: it was inspection day.

Inspection day was random. Inspection day meant officers. It meant breakfast at their work desks and guards using physical force to make them work quicker as the higher-ups observed. Inspection day meant everyone was watching, including high-level Faceless magicians. Inspection day meant literal inspection of everything, prisoners included.

“What now?” Jimin asked.

“They’re going to pat us down after breakfast,” Yoongi whispered, “and they’ll find your gun on me.”

No time for a new plan, no time to adjust the old one. Yoongi didn’t know the Faceless protocol for failed escape attempts and he didn’t plan on finding out. It was now or never.

“We’re dead,” Taehyung moaned, “we’re all going to die.”

“Quiet,” Yoongi said, “and follow through with your promised acting.”

They had to try. They would not get another opportunity after this and Yoongi could not stay here another day. He had to get back to the Block, to Namjoon and his stupid experiments, to Seokjin and his dumb ships, and to Jungkook, so he could apologize.

Taehyung _was_ pretty good at acting. His scream of pain sent a shiver down Yoongi’s spine. _He’s okay, he’s okay, it’s just fake, he’ll be fine_ , and Yoongi collapsed down onto the floor in his practiced tattooing position. He didn’t look at anything going on around him, didn’t pay attention to the exact number of guards rushing to get Taehyung’s cuffs off of him or if all the Faceless Inspectors were occupied with it or not. That was not his job.

He drew the Form square exactly, gritting his teeth through the sting of the needle. He completed it as Jimin came to stand at his elbow, perhaps hiding him from the view of a guard that hadn’t started running at the sound of Taehyung screeching in imagined pain.

The knife was a tad sloppy but Yoongi knew it would work and the second he took the needle away from his heel it warmed with his magic. He pulled it to his lips instantly (that had always been the easy part,) and then focused on getting the magic to flow. Some Dragons spoke words to help them materialize magic, others used their tongue to shape it, like fingers spinning clay on a wheel, or even used air to push the magic out, easy as breathing. Yoongi had wanted to be a Dragon that could form magic on his lips like he could on his hands—with only a thought, no sounds or gestures, just magic spilling from him to do his bidding.

As Taehyung’s screams died down, a wicked looking blade formed in front of Yoongi’s face and dropped into his lap, the sharp edge glowing with magic. He had to only twist a bit for his hands to grab it and a second later his cuffs were broken and his hands were free.

It took even less time to form the bomb. Yoongi didn’t even wait to see if things had calmed down with Taehyung, dropping it into his hand and lobbing it straight into a group of unsuspecting Inspectors.

The blast wasn’t as strong as Jungkook’s but it was enough to kill a few of them, and it was with satisfaction that Yoongi spit out three more. The rest was a blur. Jimin, the brilliant kid, was using tattoo machine gun parts to systematically crack chains, even as Yoongi’s bombs exploded work tables. Several of the Faceless had shields up but they were useless against bombs—they weren’t _bulletproof_ , after all— and even if they only cracked under Yoongi’s assault, they later broke under Taehyung and a few other inmates that had made impromptu weapons with broken chains and pieces of table.

They didn’t have anymore time.

Yoongi dropped another bomb into his hand and threw it straight at the large double doors the Faceless used to enter the work room. It dented it, but it took another three assaults before it finally blew apart and Yoongi ducked behind over turned table with Jimin to avoid the flying parts.

Then the gunfire started.

“ _Taehyung_!”

The prisoners had agreed they’d escape together, but it was also understood that it wouldn’t necessarily be possible. To a certain extent they were on their own and Yoongi had long since known that if given a hard choice, he was going to focus on getting Jimin and Taehyung out with him and ignore everyone else.

Half the prisoners were down—either dead or bleeding—and so that choice was here.

Taehyung dove over several Faceless, Yoongi supremely impressed with his athletic ability, and landed in time to swing his makeshift bat at a Faceless guard. Yoongi could see the imprint it left behind, heard the bones in his arm crack, and saw the splinters left in his skin.

Yoongi was going to try very hard to never make Taehyung angry.

“Time to run.”


	3. Negotiation

The Block had a main control room in the center Terminal that was connected to all the welded space stations. It was like the bridge of a ship although Jiho was rarely in it, preferring instead to walk the corridors and talk with people there and invite his special guests into his personal hanger. His crew ran the bridge unless absolutely necessary and Jiho even put captains in charge of it before himself. Jungkook’s pretty sure Namjoon had been in the control room more often than Jiho.

But today, not only was Jiho in the control room but several of his captains and a few each of their own crew. Namjoon hadn’t wanted to take Jungkook, but he’d always had a hard time refusing Jungkook’s pout and Jungkook had no shame using it to get his way.

Today, they were expecting the Dragon himself to stop by and ask (probably not so nicely) for the Faceless ship. It was ready to go, barely even docked for easy transportation, all the goods loaded back onto it, save for the map. They’d discussed just copying it but the Dragon had never really been behind their End The Faceless Forever quest, so they’d decided to keep it secret. Just in case.

Jungkook was amusing himself by practicing his Forms, using the guides Namjoon had given him while the captains discussed trade routes and possible ship modifications.

Someone sat down next to him and Jungkook looked up to see Seokjin smiling at him in a way that meant he had something important to say. There was another hickey on his throat and Jungkook wished Yoongi was here to make fun of it.

“Your Forms are looking really good, Jungkook.”

“My circles need work.”

Seokjin nodded, “But they’re better. And your squares are almost perfect. You’re going to be so good. I can’t wait to see your designs.”

Jungkook decided he was allowed to feel a little proud about that. “Thanks, hyung.” He glanced up at Jiho, who didn’t seem in the least bit stressed out. “Are they still trying to figure out how to get around that merchant tariff in the Geode Sector?”

“Yeah. No one but Jiho and Dujun are actually arguing about it, though. Namjoon fell asleep a few minutes ago.”

Jungkook almost asked if his captain had been up all night and _why_ he’d been up all night. But he caught sight of the hickey again and thought better of it. It was best to not know.

“Shouldn’t Jiho be agreeing with Dujun? He was once a part of Geode, after all.”

“That’s exactly why Jiho doesn’t want to do it his way. I’m sure if you’d like to voice your opinion they’ll stop arguing and listen.”

Jungkook wrinkled his nose. “Don’t tease.”

“But it’s so much fun. You’re good at everything else, I’m sure you’d be good at negotiation too.”

Jungkook went back to drawing Forms, choosing to ignore Seokjin’s little laugh. He was determined to master at least one of them by the time Yoongi was rescued.

Jungkook had gotten onto the Block as hired help for one of Jiho’s former merchants. He’d originally been on a planet in the Alliance sector. After his parents had died of a space sickness outbreak, he’d forged a few documents and helped to move merchandise from planets to the Block to be sold. He’d discovered—purely by accident—that the merchant was only dealing in ink to cover for his business in selling people.

So, after arriving at the Block, Jungkook did a little reconnaissance, hacked into the Block’s security system and a few hours later, dropped down onto the very bridge he was now and scared the shit out of Jiho.

He remembered his demands quite fondly: if Jiho was selling people, Jungkook wanted a ship to get the hell off the station and somewhere that was not quite so filthy. If Jiho was not selling people, than Jungkook had all sorts of information for him about one of his merchants dealing in illegal body trade.

Jungkook not only got paid for his information, but he also got a job as one of Jiho’s Watch Squad, as they were called, and a front row seat as the commander flagged down the Alliance police to root out all the assholes buying human beings.

And then he’d met the Bulletproof.

Jungkook had heard of Namjoon—very few people hadn’t, if you lived on the Block—and by extension the rest of his crew. He’d seen them from time to time as he wandered the corridors keeping an eye on things. At the time, there had been a huge shipment of tattoo supplies coming in from Polaris and Jungkook always made sure to watch large shipments carefully, even if it was being overseen by one of Jiho’s Captains. They sometimes overlooked things because there was just so much going on during a transfer process.

It had been a similar situation to Jungkook’s arrival, although this time he’d had the power to do something about it.

Yoongi was overseeing everything in Namjoon’s stead and checking numbers and crates as they were loaded off ships (because Seokjin and Namjoon had just gotten married and were having a stay at home honeymoon locked in their quarters since they were too busy to leave the Block). Jungkook’s long since forgotten specifics, but he would always remember that funny feeling he’d had about the way the crates were shaped. They just didn’t look right. They didn’t look like any other crates he’d ever seen. He had stepped out of the shadows, flashing his Watch Squad badge, calling in Yugyeom to help him pry the containers open.

Yoongi had been patient with the delay. He knew full well if the Watch Squad stepped in it was with good reason and, as the Asshole Merchant kept pointing out to everyone, despite Jungkook’s young age. Once Jungkook had broken open the walls of the crates themselves to find weapons carefully packed into them, Yoongi was the first into action. And then fury had descended and more guards were called and Jiho arrived, sorting the matter within seconds, sending the merchant to the brig (because this was a Block issue, not an Alliance issue,) and promising Jungkook a raise in pay.

“You have a good eye for design,” Yoongi had said, and then proceeded to take Jungkook out for dinner and ask him if he’d like to meet Namjoon and if he’d like to be part of his merchant crew.

From then on, Jungkook had been smitten.

Namjoon had won him over, promising to teach him magical design, promising Seokjin would teach him to pilot, promising they’d make him a powerful magician. And they had. But in the process, Jungkook had fallen in love and _wallowed_ because Yoongi had been very clear that he did not like Jungkook back.

At least, not in the way Jungkook wanted.

“Head’s up, the Dragon’s coming in hot.”

Jungkook left his designs and reminiscing on the floor, standing to get a good look at Jiho’s massive viewer.

He’d only seen the Dragon’s ship twice, but it was from afar, and he’d been too busy to give it proper attention. He could feel the tension in the room, noticed Jiho’s grip tightening almost imperceptibly on the arm of his chair, Namjoon’s jaw twitching as he fumbled for Seokjin’s hand.

There was no sound in space, so one second there was only the stillness of stars and then the next, a shower of silent magic and the Dragon’s ship was looming in front of them, filling the viewer with its bold colors and terrifying serpent design on the side. The metal towards the front twisted itself into the shape of a dragon’s head, mouth slightly open to allow for weaponry to peak out, for actual fire and magic to pour from its lips.

“Their guns are pointed straight at us.”

The Dragon was perhaps a tad more angry than they had expected.

“Shields,” Jiho said, and Jungkook was reaching for his tattoos in anticipation of the order before it was given, “lock us down.”

Park Kyung had devised a two tiered lockdown system for the Block. The first phase was a secret series of mechanisms, a tattoo code that put up invisible shields and sent out warnings to the merchants: _we might be under attack soon, quietly close your shops and wait for further instructions_. It didn’t inhibit any incoming transmissions but it did jam any outgoing. To anyone on the outside it wouldn’t look like the Block was any different, but on the inside, alarms were flashing and people were heading to shelters and hidden guns were being manned.

The second tier was visible. It was the whole nine yards: loud sirens, magical shields, and in some cases, actual metal shuttered over the more vulnerable parts of the Block. And weaponry. Lots and lots of weaponry that was put into use, magical and otherwise.

Jungkook had tattoos to activate the first tier because of his time in the Watch Squad in case he’d uncovered something potentially dangerous. He’d never had to do it—though he’d practice after Jiho had put the tattoos on him—but he called them to his fingertips now, blue circles zooming across his skin and sending the lockdown order across the entire Block. He got a tiny thrill from it, though he’d never admit that out loud.

_I can handle the Dragon_ , Jiho had said. Jungkook believed him, but that didn’t mean they would wiggle out of any consequences for stealing the Dragon’s prize. It was more that Jiho was confident in bearing the brunt of the Dragon’s wrath, or if he was lucky, talking him down from it altogether.

The viewer flickered as the call was connected, magic shimmering across it as it blended with the tech. The Dragon was sprawled over a seat, (a captain’s chair, a _throne_ ), hands resting delicately and decorated intricately, one reaching up to brush at his bangs, red hair cut at a perfect angle across his forehead. His lips were burning with magic, the color so bright Jungkook couldn’t make out their Forms.

Jiho had three seconds to speak (Hello, Jiyong, I’ve been expecting you,) before he was cut off, the Dragon raising an eyebrow, his expression making Jungkook take an involuntary step backwards.

“Where is the ship?”

Jungkook had to bite the inside of his cheeks to keep himself from squeaking in alarm.

“Ready to be sent to you. We were cataloguing it before we realized it was the one you’d been tracking.”

Tattoos flickered at an incredible speed across the Dragon’s face and arms, as if he was considering the best way to turn the Block into space dust. By the sheer amount of designs on his skin, he clearly had many painful options.

Jungkook suddenly wished he’d activated his bulletproof tattoo before they connected the magic of the viewers. Too late now; the Dragon would definitely notice and then they’d really be in trouble.

“Before you realized it was mine,” the Dragon echoed, and he was definitely mocking them. There was a stifled snort of a laugh-turned-cough from off screen that was definitely one of his crew. But the Dragon continued before Jiho could say anything more, “Jiho, you know I value your merchants and the deals we make. I value your presence here because it really helps the sector. But you can’t steal my shit.”

“It wasn’t intentional. Everyone on the Block knows better. Seungyoon was yours once; you know he’d never purposefully try to harm you or your enterprise.”

The Dragon did not look entirely convinced.

“Be that as it may…send the ship over. Seunghyun is convinced you wouldn’t have taken any goods off for yourself but I’ll be watching your merchants for awhile to be sure.”

“Of course,” Jiho nodded.

“I’m not happy.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to be.”

“I won’t be trading here for awhile.”

That would hurt. Granted, he was allowing them to continue business in the Dragon sector, and he’d eventually come back to them, but the Dragon played a large part in their purchase and supply of goods. His absence would slam their profits.

Jiho fingers tightened on his seat again, though only for a second. “I understand.”

“I’ll see you at the Alliance gathering later this month? I have some new ink designs for you to test.”

“I’ll be there.”

Jungkook felt the tension bleed from the bridge as their conversation drifted to other things as both leaders let their subordinates take care of the ship transfer. The lockdown wouldn’t be lifted until the Dragon had left but Jungkook’s breath came easier and he sunk back down to the ground, picked his guides back up, and started to practice.

—

They did not have time to visit all twelve bases.

Jiho didn’t have the man power to send his captains out anymore, not with the Dragon pulling out of their business for an undetermined amount of cycles. But neither did he expect Namjoon or his crew to stop looking for Yoongi and promised to give them whatever they needed besides captains and ships. It was just Namjoon and Seokjin and Jungkook and Hoseok.

But it would be okay. Seokjin had _Wings_ back in commission and they had the map of the Faceless hideouts. They just had to figure out a way to narrow the list down a little bit.

“We need intelligence,” Namjoon finally said.

“You’re very smart,” Seokjin said, patting Namjoon’s shoulder.

Namjoon frowned. “Thank you, but that isn’t what I meant.”

“I know. I deflected because I don’t like that train of thought. I don’t like _him_.”

“We don’t really have much of a choice.”

“He’s not that bad,” Hoseok said, “I mean. Kind of eccentric? But usually helpful and nonjudgmental. He won’t blab our plan to anyone.”

“If we can pay his price,” Seokjin said.

“That’s never stopped us before.”

There was a beat, in which Jungkook thought that maybe Seokjin was going to argue more, or possibly storm out, yelling about second options. But then he sighed. “Our credit account is never going to recover.”

Namjoon tapped his fingertips on the table. “It might,” he said, “if we can give Heechul information of equal value instead.”

—

Jungkook had never met Kim Heechul.

Heechul, though he made his home in Polaris and ascribed to most of the rules of the Alliance, was known for doing whatever pleased him. He knew most everyone in the each sector of the galaxy and had eyes and ears everywhere. If anyone wanted to know anything they went to Heechul and were guaranteed an answer within one cycle (though only if he wanted to look into it at all.) He’d never failed to deliver—at least not that Jungkook had ever heard.

Jungkook knew for sure he had several additional informants living on the Block to supplement the information Jiho sold him. But he was friends with the Block’s commander, as well as Yoongi, and that got them into Heechul’s base without any fuss.

It wasn’t anything like the Block. For one, it wasn’t a station. It wasn’t on a planet. It wasn’t even a moon. It was an asteroid. Granted it was a massive asteroid, one that _might_ be mistaken for a moon, but that was only before anyone drawing near it realized there wasn’t a planet it could circle.

Heechul’s base was carved into one side, buildings overtaking ravines where magic had burned holes and sprawling sky ports stretched across craters too deep to see to the bottom. If the Block were to be likened to the the size of a Jungkook’s head, Heechul’s base would be roughly the size of _Wings_ , which was to say, there was absolutely no comparison of merit or note.

“The size never ceases to amaze me,” Hoseok said, as they guided _Wings_ to their designated docking bay.

“The size of Heechul’s ego is what amazes me,” Seokjin muttered.

Jungkook snorted.

“Let’s try not to piss him off,” Namjoon sighed, “we need whatever he can tell us about this map.”

“Are you sure you want to let him have a copy of the map?”

“If it lessens the credits we have to give him? Yes. And I mean, he’s Yoongi’s friend. That will count for something.”

Their plan was simple: show Heechul the map and ask if he knew anything about the Faceless bases marked. They were hoping he’d at least heard of a few being decimated, in order to check them off their list of possible prisons holding Yoongi. But they were also hoping he hadn’t heard of all of them in order to give him something in return for his information. Namjoon was optimistic it would work out in their favor but Seokjin was not.

“Hoseok and I are staying with the ship.”

“Why, so you can blast in to rescue us if need be?”

“Well, yes, but also because I don’t trust Heechul to not have someone sneak aboard while we’re gone and steal information from our systems.”

It _was_ something Heechul might try to do. Jungkook had a feeling it had happened to Seokjin in previous visits.

“Then guess it’s just you and me,” Namjoon said, patting Jungkook’s shoulder.

They didn’t take any kind of weapon, since Heechul would confiscate them anyway, and rolled up their shirt sleeves, revealing their hands and arms for all to see. They couldn’t take away their magic without slashing their tattoos directly, so to show good faith keeping as many visible as possible was the best avenue to take.

Guards met them as the Seokjin lowered the ramp, hydraulics hissing steam as magic crept down into the ground to keep them stable.

Namjoon shook hands with one the guards while Jungkook’s ears popped from the sudden change in pressure.

“Heechul’s waiting for you,” the guard said, gesturing towards an open-air taxi ready to take them to the heart of the complex.

Flying through Heechul’s base was an experience. Perhaps for obvious reason it felt a lot less home-like and comfortable than the Block, but it was definitely just as busy. They were going too fast for Jungkook to really get a look at the buildings and marketplaces, but it was clearly a well oiled machine. Vehicles crawled around on the ground on well-traveled roads and ships and other air machines flew above them in perfectly structured routes around sky scrapers and monuments.

Instead of metal keeping the oxygen from escaping, the entire base was covered by a layer of magic. Huge shield symbols were forever burned into the rock of the asteroid and shimmering light stretched across the sky, blurring the stars a little but still keeping them visible. It was as if everything hung down (or thrust up) into space, as if you could breathe in super novas themselves. Not even traveling in a space ship had ever given Jungkook a similar feeling and it made him dizzy.

Heechul lived in a palace—there was really no other way to describe it.

It towered over everything, visible from any part of the sprawling compound, spires twirling upwards like fingers reaching up to sift through the night sky, planets and constellations all play things in Heechul’s grand design. It was the only thing not blackened from magical attack or worn from the harshness of so much activity surrounding it. It gleamed like all the light in the universe shone directly on it and Jungkook couldn’t even imagine all the protective spells layered to keep it that way and all the artistic magic used for its upkeep.

Of course, it wasn’t bulletproof. But Heechul didn’t _need_ to be bulletproof. He had armies at his disposal and the might of the Polaris Sector behind him. No one was stupid enough to challenge that.

The guards guided the air taxi to one of the taller spires of metal, gliding easily through a sheen of magic that set Jungkook’s skin tingling and settling easily into yet another docking bay.

For a brief moment, Jungkook wondered which person was most capable of waving their hand and ending him: the Dragon or Kim Heechul?

It was probably best to not know.

The descriptions of Kim Heechul varied widely from person to person. From fashion style to hair cut, Jungkook has never heard him described in quite the same way. But rather than consider all of them inaccurate, it was more likely a factor of Heechul’s eccentricity.

Today, Heechul’s hair was black and pushed back from his face, his body wrapped in some sort of ancient style of clothing, more robe than shirt and pants or even dress (he’d been known to sometimes wear all three.)

“Namjoon! I was so surprised when Jiho said you’d be visiting.”

“I don’t come a lot,” Namjoon nodded. “This is Jungkook.”

“The prodigy. I was wondering when we’d finally meet, Yoongi’s told me so much about you. Today is the day, apparently. I’m so pleased.”

“The pleasure’s all mine,” Jungkook said.

Heechul’s hand was decorated with tattoos and now that he was closer, Jungkook could even see some peeking up above the vibrantly colored cloth on his collarbones. Was his entire body covered in magic? Jungkook was at least smart enough to not ask, though it would probably forever bother him until he figured it out.

“I’m a little busy today, but Jiho mentioned something about the Faceless and Yoongi so I squeezed you into my schedule.”

“We really appreciate it.”

“This way.”

Not a single guard followed them. Either Heechul trusted them entirely (which was very unlikely, because Heechul didn’t trust people very often) or he didn’t consider two bulletproof magicians much of a threat (which also should have been unlikely but Heechul was not a magician to easily dismiss.) Jungkook did not plan on finding out which of those reasons caused Heechul to guide them into a nondescript conference room leaving them utterly alone. At least, alone to Jungkook’s naked eye.

“So,” Heechul said, crossing his leg and resting his chin on the back of his hand, “Tell me what I can do for you.”

They’d put the map onto a data pad so they wouldn’t have to upload or transmit it to anything of Heechul’s until they had an agreement, and so Namjoon slid it across the table for Heechul to look at, explaining how they got it and knowing he would never tell the Dragon, especially if the map was something Heechul wanted to copy. From the way his eyebrows raised and the corner of his mouth twitched, it looked like Heechul’s interest was indeed piqued.

“Have you seen it before?” Namjoon asked.

“Not like this,” Heechul admitted fingertip sliding the image around the screen, zooming in to get a better look at it. “I do recognize some of these marked bases, but not all of them.”

He gave Namjoon a shrewd look that made Jungkook want to slide back in his chair. Namjoon moved forward and took the data pad back, probably hoping Heechul hadn’t already started memorizing the information. “We think Yoongi is being held at one of them.”

Heechul leaned back in his seat, fingertips making a steeple as he started putting the pieces together. “I see. You want to search all these bases but you don’t think you have enough time.”

“You said you recognize a few of them. Tell us which ones and you can keep the map and feel free to explore the bases after we ascertain whether or not Yoongi is being kept at any of them.”

“Jiho doesn’t want them?”

“The Block is…currently being watched closely by the Dragon. We can’t pull in any big raids without his permission. So the bases are yours for the taking, even if you only cross one off our list. We only care about Yoongi.”

“Interesting.”

Jungkook could almost see the numbers flying through Heechul’s brain as he calculated personnel and raid costs and weighed them with potential profit and goods. There was a fire in his eyes that hadn’t been there a moment ago and it made relief sink sweet down Jungkook’s spine; he could finally breathe.

“I accept, pending a written contract, of course. Give me a moment.”

Namjoon had enough time to grasp Jungkook’s hand and give it a comforting squeeze before Heechul was back, a data pad of his own in hand and one of his captains with him. “Gentlemen, this is Siwon. Siwon, the Bulletproof. I hope you don’t mind my bringing in a witness.”

“Of course not,” Namjoon said.

“I can cross four bases off this map for you. One I’ve stumbled upon on my own and the rest I’ve heard of other people finding.”

Perhaps in a show of good faith, Namjoon uploaded the map onto Heechul’s servers first. Jungkook would not have done that but maybe that’s why he wasn’t a captain.

The map spread across the room in holographic form, the galaxy spinning up into the room. The Geode and Pleiades Sectors spun fast past Jungkook’s face, Prime Sector settling next to Namjoon at a more leisurely pace and the official Alliance Sector resting next to Siwon. Heechul swirled a finger through the Legend Sector, as if reminiscing about time he spent there, before sitting down at the edge of Dragon Space, crossing one leg over the other again so that the tip of one toe rested in Polaris.

Jungkook blocked out Heechul’s rambling and focused on the eight bases left on the map. He mentally crossed out the one marked in uncharted space. That would be far too dangerous to be true—it was most likely there to confuse people. No one would risk attempting to get to it unless Yoongi wasn’t at any of the other bases. It was probably not the one in the Alliance sector either—there were just too many habitable planets and crowded space stations for it to go unnoticed. So that left two in Prime, two in Polaris, one in Dragon, and one in Legend.

That was much more manageable than twelve unknown Faceless bases. _Lair_ s _,_ Jungkook’s brain supplied, and he supposed that was a much more applicable term.

“I hope you find him,” Heechul said, “I miss our dates.”

Jungkook kept his mouth shut because if he opened it he’d damage everything they’d just signed.

Namjoon smiled. “We will.”

“Where do we start?” Jungkook asked, after they’d said their goodbyes and were heading back to the docking bay. Heechul had promised to not loot any of the bases until Namjoon gave him the go ahead, and so they left with a fair contract and hearts that were a little bit lighter than they had been.

“Jin’s long range magic sensors,” Namjoon said. “They take a fair amount of prisoners so there will be a regular influx of inmates and if it’s a work camp—as their prisons were during the last war—there will be trackable shipmates of goods coming in and out.”

“So if we can get good readings from Seokjin’s sensors we can cross off bases that don’t seem to be busy?”

Namjoon nodded. “Exactly.”

“Why didn’t we just do that originally? Why did we come to Heechul?”

“Because they aren’t stealthy sensors. If it’s a busy Faceless base they’ll be noticed.”

“And it will give them time to abandon everything,” Jungkook finished.

_Wings_ loomed in front of them as the air taxi turned a corner and Jungkook felt a little sting of pride just looking at it. They’d come so far, just since he’d joined them.

“And then we’d be right back at square one,” Namjoon said. “Now, there’s half the bases left to check, most of them within reach. Even if they notice Jin’s magic we have time to get there before they pull out. Also,” Namjoon smirked, “if they have a way to track the magic it will lead them back here, not to the Block.”

Jungkook laughed. “So we can start finding Yoongi right away?”

Namjoon tossed an arm around Jungkook’s shoulders. Jungkook was probably going to split his face from how hard he was grinning. “Yeah. We can start right away.”


	4. Escape

Miraculously, they were alive.

It was just the three of them. Yoongi had no idea if the other prisoners had managed to escape. Some had definitely been killed, their screams of pain as they were hit by Faceless spells still ringing in his ears. He hoped it hadn’t been all of them.

Jimin was limping, a stray spell glancing off his leg, and they were all bruised pretty bad from diving out of the way of giant fireballs. But they were mostly whole. They had gotten out of the prison fairly easy amid all the chaos and thanks to Taehyung’s good luck. He’d chosen the right set of doors out of the work area: not one swarming with Faceless soldiers or ones directly in line with magical crossfire.

Their door had led straight into a hangar bay. All of the ships were out of commission, but it gave them enough cover to get out of the line of fire. Yoongi was tempted to dash out of the building it immediately, but they needed a few things first: a map, to figure out where everything on this godforsaken rock was, and a healer, to fix their tattered skin. And they needed their magic back if they wanted to survive.

“If I had something to hook into,” Taehyung said, “I could find out where the med bay is.”

“It will require tattoos,” Yoongi said.

“We’ll just have to improvise.”

Taehyung didn’t share his plan—something Yoongi was definitely going to have to remedy because there was no way Namjoon or Seokjin would ever be okay with this sort of lackadaisical attitude towards strategy—and after a second of peeking around the Faceless ship again, leapt away from them and pounced on a passing Faceless magician.

“ _What in the stars—“_ Yoongi hissed.

“Taehyung!” Jimin looked like he didn’t know if he should smack the Faceless first or Taehyung.

Taehyung solved it for him, punching the Faceless straight in his mask, cracking it half and knocking him out. It was so reckless, so unbelievably insane, and for a second Jungkook flashed in front of Yoongi’s eyes because this was something he would do. It honestly made him a little fearful of the things that might happen once Taehyung and Jungkook were in the same room.

“Taehyung—“

But Taehyung was ignoring them both, rolling up the sleeves of the magician a little further to get a good look at the tattoos. “Okay. So either we figure out which one of these will connect at one of their hubs or we cut his arm off and try each one.”

“It won’t connect without magic.”

“I’ve done it before. I just need to know which tattoo it is.”

“I have no idea,” Yoongi admitted. Despite some generic designs for basic magic, tattoos were too personal to figure that sort of thing out. Especially tattoos for accessing systems. The ones for _Wings_ took Yoongi days to draw and would take another magician at least a week to recreate, never mind distinguish among all the others. “We don’t have time to—“

But he was too late. Taehyung had snatched a sharp piece of debris and in a second brought it down on the unconscious Faceless’ arm, severing it, blood gushing across the floor. The Faceless would have screamed but instead choked on his own blood—or perhaps teeth that had fallen out due to Taehyung’s punch.

Jimin squeaked and clutched at Yoongi’s shirt.

Taehyung grabbed the severed arm. “Okay, time to go.”

“Stars,” Yoongi said, “You are _insane_.” It was so attractive. Yoongi was supremely confused right now.

“I want to get out of here. Do you?”

Another explosion rocked the building and a door at the end of the hangar opened, a whole squad of Faceless pouring through it. They couldn’t run through this base blind, trying to find a hub. _What would Namjoon do?_

“Which way?” Taehyung asked, and his hand landed on the skin of Yoongi’s arm, his touch warm.

Yoongi had to put a hand on the ship to steady himself. Where would one put strategic hubs for magicians to access information? They had them all over the Block but they were out in the open for all to see. Jiho had designed it that way so no one could secretly steal codes. The hubs were always watched and Yoongi suspected the ones on his base would be too. If not by actual people than with cameras.

So what place could they go to access the base’s information unseen?

“ _Hyung_ ,” Jimin urged.

Yoongi drummed his fingers on the ship. Stars, but the color was so creepy, the metal pale and almost dewey looking. He hated it. He wanted to open each hatch and destroy them all…wait. _The ship_ , he thought. _This_ ship.

“The ship,” he said, “wait a second.”

_Wings_ had records of the Block. It had the magical means of connecting to the system in order to dock and take off, to communicate with the Block, to access all sorts of records and layouts. The Faceless ships would have to have the same thing. Right?

“A ship,” Taehyung said, catching on, “ _of course_.”

They had to wait as another squadron rushed by them and then Yoongi and Jimin boosted Taehyung up onto the metal, severed arm in tow and still dripping blood. “Can we even get the hatch open?”

“There’s probably a tattoo for that,” Taehyung said, and examined the arm.

“But the magic is gone,” Jimin said.

“That’s not an issue. The correct tattoo might be on his other arm, maybe I should cut off that one too?”

“Let’s not bother with any unnecessary limb severing,” Yoongi said, “try that one first.”

“Sensible,” Taehyung nodded, “okay.”

Yoongi couldn’t see how Taehyung managed to figure out which tattoo it was or how to make it work without the Faceless’ magic, but a few minutes later, there was a hiss and a hatch opened. Taehyung slid off the metal. “Stay out here and watch,” he said.

“How did he do that?” Jimin asked. “How could he possibly make those tattoos work without magic? _How did he do that?”_

Yoongi decided an explanation could wait. They needed to trust each other to get out of here.

It took Taehyung a lot longer to get the information from inside the ship. The sounds of battle were faint at best now and Yoongi started tapping his foot. They didn’t want to get caught here once the Faceless started to go back to their posts. Another very stressful five minutes and Taehyung came back out, tossing the arm away with one hand and handing Yoongi a data pad with the other. “A layout of the base,” Taehyung said, “and lots of other useful information. Let’s go.”

Forget hugging. If they managed to get off this damn planet alive, Yoongi was going to kiss Taehyung full on the mouth.

It was a lot easier and a lot less stressful to wind around the Faceless ships and fueling trucks and mechanical stations with an actual goal in mind. Yoongi led them with the map up on the data pad, the medical bay already highlighted thanks to Taehyung, and they reached a lift in no time.

Taehyung drew something with his finger on an activation pad and it beeped for him, opening immediately.

“ _How?_ ” Jimin demanded, as Taehyung keyed in the correct section of the base.

“Activation pads don’t read magic,” Taehyung said, “they read tattoo patterns. I just have to draw them on the pad for it to work.”

“There is no way that’s true. Yoongi, tell him he’s wrong.”

Technically, Taehyung was correct. But that meant he was good enough at drawing to sketch it exactly as it had been inked and in precisely the right order of strokes as the magic filled each line, like blood in veins. Yoongi was very good and he worked with the best but he’d never met anyone able to do that successfully. It was a little overwhelming and Yoongi didn’t have the time he needed to process it. He really knew how to pick them.

“I’ll explain it thoroughly when we have time. For now, be ready to hit anything that gets in our way.”

Jimin wrinkled his nose. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Unbelievably, it didn’t. The med bay looked far away on the map, but the lift was fast and the transport shuttle Taehyung found them—one not unlike some at the Block—was even faster, zipping through corridors to blur the walls into streaks of bland color.

“There’s one person in the bay,” Taehyung said, “if we’re lucky it’s a doctor.”

Yoongi called his magic to his lips and drew another knife from them, gripping the hilt tight. If they were even more lucky, the doctor would be one that could heal broken tattoos, not just skin.

The shuttle came to a sudden stop and Yoongi poked his head out first, scanning the corridor. He could see the door to the med bay, it was so close, but he waited a moment, listening for the sound of Faceless boots or voices.

“Okay,” he said, “we’re good. Quickly, now.”

They ran to door, letting Taehyung doodle a pattern onto the activation pad to open it and Yoongi threw himself inside.

It looked like any other med bay. There wasn’t anything that said _Faceless_ in it, not even their concentric circles mark. It looked like it could have been the Block’s med bay, save for that it was a little bit smaller.

But the person standing in the center wasn’t a friend or even a doctor, he was Faceless, mask in his hands.

Yoongi had the blade to the man’s throat in a second, kicking at his knees so he went down onto the ground.

“Alliance piece of—“ the Faceless started, but stopped as Yoongi drew blood on his neck.

Jimin began to search the cabinets. Taehyung went straight to the hub, grabbing the data pad on his way and connecting it, digital readout pouring from it.

“Where’s the doctor?” Yoongi asked, pressing the knife closer to the man’s jugular.

“We don’t need him,” Taehyung said, meaning the Faceless soldier. “I’m sending out a request for the doctor to come here.”

Slitting the Faceless’ throat was an absolute pleasure. “Do you want the arm of this one too?” Jimin asked.

Yoongi almost felt like laughing but it would have been such an effort. Instead, he used to his strength to haul the body to the side of the room and then waited at the door, knife ready, for the doctor to arrive.

It didn’t take long.

The door slid open and it was a woman that stepped inside. It took her all of two seconds to realize what was going on but that’s all they needed to lock the door behind her and for Yoongi to press the knife to her side.

“Can you heal ruined tattoos?”

Her pupils shook. “No.”

“Skin?”

Carefully, she nodded.

“You go first,” Jimin said to Taehyung, “I’m going to find another tattoo gun and make some more ink.”

“A stellar idea,” Yoongi said.

He made the doctor sit in front of Taehyung, digging the knife into her skin just a little, making her inhale sharply. “Do anything except heal his skin and I gut you.”

Carefully, the doctor took Taehyung’s arms in her own, circles of yellow magic sliding down her skin to glow at her fingertips. Taehyung’s wounds weren’t as extensive as Yoongi’s and it was no time at all before his arms had healed over, skin knitted back together and the traces of his ruined tattoos gone.

“This is a really nice knife,” Taehyung said, as they switched places, “can you ink one for me?”

“Sure,” Yoongi said.

Scarred tissue always took longer to heal and was far more painful than open wounds. He winced as the cuts reopened under her direction, grit his teeth as his skin rippled and healed.

It felt _so good_ to have his fingers back to normal.

“Jimin?”

“Give me a minute.” He was still mixing, blood dripping from his fingers into a vial, several other containers open around him, presumably ingredients he’d tossed into the ink mixture. “Okay.”

“Let her heal your leg.”

Knife still pressed to her skin, the doctor meticulously healed the wound on Jimin leg and wrapped in carefully in clean gauze.

“You can’t possibly think you’re going to get out of here alive,” the doctor said.

Yoongi shrugged, standing up and beginning to rummage through the drawers, hoping to find something else that might be useful. He was hoping for more tattoo guns, but instead, as he opened up a cabinet under a sink, he found an actual gun. A metal gun. With bullets. No magic required.

“How quaint,” Taehyung said, when Yoongi showed it to him. “Don’t shoot yourself in the foot.”

“I can use a gun, thank you very much.” He checked it carefully. It had been awhile since he’d seen one, but it was clean and dry, someone having bothered with its upkeep. He tucked it into his belt. “I’ll take what weapons we can get.”

Taehyung shrugged, as if to say, suit yourself.

“Jimin, we’re on a schedule here.”

“Fine. Yes, okay. I’m done.”

He’d only managed to make a small bottle’s worth, but Yoongi screwed the lid tight and slid it into his pocket. There weren’t any tattoo machines, but that was fine. They still had the one Taehyung made and it would do.

Healing Jimin took even less time than Taehyung and Yoongi took the liberty of whacking the doctor over the head after she was finished. Taehyung caught her as she slumped and they laid her out on one of the beds, securing her hands to it, just in case she woke before they’d worked out a proper escape plan.

“We should get out of this med bay. It’s only a matter of time before injured Faceless are brought here.”

“We need tattoos,” Taehyung said.

“I can draw a few on you both before we go, but perhaps in another room.”

It would hinder them a little in terms of safe departure, but Yoongi being the only one with weapons would hinder them even more. It had been difficult enough already.

They were careful leaving the med bay, slinking away and into the nearest empty room Taehyung could find, relatively speaking. It was a maintenance closet, so while there were no people, they did have to navigate cleaning carts and a few deactivated cleaning droids. But there was light enough for tattooing and chairs for them to sit.

“I would like that knife,” Taehyung said, “if you don’t mind.”

Normally, Yoongi would refuse to ink someone so hastily. He was sure he could craft a knife for Taehyung better than any he’d ever had and settling for something quickly sketched irritated the perfectionist in Yoongi. He took a lot of pride in his work. But they didn’t have time for that.

Taehyung didn’t seem to feel the needle at all, watching with interest as Yoongi drew a perfect square and then filled the center in with his design. He made the blade slightly thicker than his own, thinking about how earlier Taehyung had swung around his makeshift bat.

“Nice,” Taehyung commented.

The tattoo healed as Taehyung pulled his magic into it, a soft green spilling into it and the knife rising in wisps of color. “Perfect.”

“Jimin,” Yoongi directed, “come and sit.”

“I’m good.”

Yoongi frowned. “We all need weapons.”

“Jimin,” Taehyung said, “don’t be silly.”

Jimin shifted on his feet. “I, uh—I mean that I can’t.”

“You can’t what?”

Jimin looked at the ground. “I’m not a magician.”

Yoongi gaped.

“What?” Taehyung asked.

“I can’t—I don’t have magic.”

“But your hands were slashed,” Taehyung said.

“I had some dead tattoos on me. The Faceless didn’t know; it was precautionary.”

“But everyone has magic,” Taehyung argued.

“Yes, but not everyone can use it,” Jimin corrected, beginning to look angry, “My blood might be special but every tattoo that’s been inked on me has never worked and believe me when I say that all the best have tried.”

_I haven’t tried_ , Yoongi thought. _Namjoon and Minho haven’t tried. Jiho hasn’t tried._ Who were these people Jimin were calling the _best_? Some people were trickier than others, and while Yoongi had encountered one or two people he’d failed to connect to magic, more often than not his designs worked where everyone else’s had failed. But he also knew not to push it. It was clearly a sensitive topic.

Yoongi was going to fix it. Later.

“Okay,” he said, “for now, take this instead.” He pulled the gun from his pants and handed it over. “You know how to use it?”

Jimin nodded.

“Then I’m going to ink myself and we can go.”

He needed a gun. He started his square with ease and used a design that was pretty much standard issue on the Block because it worked so well. Still, he was careful as he pulled the magic into place, since he’d never done it with blood ink and was pleased to find all the parts right where they needed to be. He was satisfied, short of firing it to be actually sure.

“I don’t suppose you could make us bulletproof?” Taehyung asked. He looked appropriately excited at the thought.

“I’d like to but I need Namjoon for that. When we get back to the Block, for sure.” He gave Jimin a shrewd look, “and that goes for you, too.”

Jimin’s smile was not convincing. That was fine. He’d learn soon enough that to the bulletproof—to the _Block_ —no was an unacceptable answer.

“Now let’s get out of this starsburned shit hole.”

With Yoongi’s deadly accuracy with a gun, Taehyung’s uncanny ability to stab Faceless eyeballs through their masks, and Jimin reading the blueprints on the data pad to guide them out, their exit was quicker than Yoongi had expected.

Jimin also had the forethought to grab them workers uniforms before they left the mechanics closet and even though the material was stiff on Yoongi, getting out the pale, peach colored prisoner coveralls made him feel a hundred times better.

“There is a city just outside,” Jimin said, squinting down at the readouts, “but I don’t know how safe it’ll be. Faceless will probably be meticulously searching.”

“Risky,” Taeyhung nodded, “but on the flip side, if we hide well enough and they don’t find us, we’d be relatively safe.”

“If,” Yoongi said.

“We need a lot of things to actually escape this planet.”

They needed a place to hole up for awhile, a place to make more ink, a place to draw more tattoos, a place to figure out their location. And they needed food. Yoongi was starving.

“A ship being the most desirable thing we lack,” Jimin said.

And a ship. Right. That was also very important.

“Okay, to the city, then. Let’s hope these uniforms don’t attract too much attention.”

—

The city itself was nothing spectacular. Not too crowded, but there were Faceless walking around in pairs, like the guards in the prison had and the inhabitants didn’t seem to particularly care.

The implications made Yoongi’s stomach turn (how were there people left that supported them? How did the Alliance not know about this? Did they know and not care?) but he didn’t have time to puzzle it out now. He could tell the Namjoon everything after they got off this rock and he would know what to do about it.

Jimin found them a brothel. Taehyung found them money.

“I knew a pick pocket,” he’d informed them, much in the same way he’d told them he’d once known an actor. Taehyung had, apparently, known quite a number of people and was good at learning things from them.

“I didn’t know you could rent rooms at a brothel,” Yoongi said, “instead of like…people.”

“We had to rent people, too,” Taehyung said, “but I told them not to come around until later because we wanted to have a party by ourselves first.”

Yoongi (unbelievably, embarrassingly) felt himself blush. He was so glad no one from the Block was there to see. Min Yoongi did not _blush_ over the idea of sex. Min Yoongi did not get embarrassed at the thought of having sex with the other people in this room. Stars, what was Taehyung doing to him? Unacceptable. Time to focus on something else. Like food.

After two cycles of protein gruel, anything was bound to taste good. Yoongi knew this meal wasn’t much of anything, but it was the most delicious thing he’d had in awhile. He felt so much better afterwards, like his brain was back to its normal self. He felt like he could do anything—so they spent the evening beefing up their strategy. At the top of the list were tattoos.

Jimin spent the evening making his blood ink until he started to feel faint.

As fast as he was making it, Yoongi was using it on both himself and Taehyung. He drew weapons and shields, replacing nearly everything they had lost. He used the color magic he’d designed for Namjoon on Taehyung, changing the design just a tad so it would suit his style—Taehyung said the tattoo was better than the one he’d had before and Yoongi couldn’t help the stab of pride.

He felt ready.

—

By morning, they’d mapped the city out and had a good escape plan. They still didn’t know where in space they were, because the data pad didn’t have that information and there was nothing they could hack in the brothel. But Taehyung was confident he could figure it out once they had a ship so that became their first priority.

They didn’t want to sneak back into the prison to get a ship so they targeted a Port a little ways from the city. They left the brothel in the early morning, using the sounds coming from behind the doors to cover their departure—sex never slept.

It wasn’t easy. The street was patrolled. The docking bay was guarded. There would inevitably be a firefight.

But Yoongi had more tattoos now, as did Taehyung. They’d found Jimin a better gun, stolen out of a brothel room by Taehyung (“I used to know a master thief, I’ve got this.”)

They also had the element of surprise and utter desperation.

Yoongi lost track of how many shots he got off. He stopped counting how many heads rolled under Taehyung’s knife. Yoongi was a soldier, and he had family waiting for him. Namjoon, Seokjin, Hoseok. _Jungkook_. Like hell he was going to let a bunch of Faceless foot soldiers get in his way.

“I would be terrified of you,” Taehyung said, “if we weren’t on the same side.”

Yoongi wanted to say the same thing, but a Faceless got in his line of vision and Taehyung drove the knife into its mask.

They were all spattered with blood by the time they found a ship. Yoongi didn’t have time to marvel the fact that he was in a Faceless ship, or think about all the things he could learn from it. There would be time for that later.

“I’ve got this,” Taehyung said, “you just focus on offense.”

“Are you sure?”

“Jimin can help me. Go shoot at something.”

Yoongi would feel better if Jimin had tattoos for it—flying was much more precise and exact that way—but it was a valid point. Better Yoongi’s tattoos were used for popping off shots at the Faceless.

They were up in the air in a second and blasting away, the Faceless scrambling into ships behind them, probably still trying to figure out what was happening.

“Shit,” Yoongi muttered, scrambling to get to the weaponry, “shit, Taehyung, warn a guy.”

The Faceless ship had several gun ports. It was all magical—one had to have magic to be Faceless—and Yoongi slid into the chair carefully, hoping the tattoos he needed would work. The odds of that were good. The Faceless had members from all corners of the galaxy so he assumed any ports had very basic magic in order to seamlessly merge with any sort of weaponry.

He was right. He slid his hands over the readouts and pushed his magic through it so his guns and his bombs started forming outside the hull. It was even easier for him to aim them and watching his bullets start to rip through other Faceless ships was very satisfying

“I don’t know where we are! There’s a map but I don’t recognize anything. Can I just put in a destination?”

Yoongi aimed for a slightly larger Faceless fighter coming up on them fast and lobbed a bomb at it.

“Just do it!” he encouraged, “If there’s a star map it will work. It’s not like their coordinates are different than ours!”

“Where to?”

“Anywhere,” Yoongi shouted, “anywhere but fucking here!”

He braced himself. One second they were being pelted by hot magic and bullets, the Faceless having sent up more ships than Taehyung could out run, and then the next everything was sparkling and green, the stars white lines as Taehyung’s magic moved them from one point in space to another.

Yoongi had stopped throwing up after long distance space travel years ago. But he heard Jimin retching and hoped he’d aimed for a container.

“Where are we?” Yoongi asked.

“Jimin’s family’s shop. There should be an Alliance communicator in there somewhere, unless it’s been shot to hell.”

Smart. It was very, very smart. Yoongi hadn’t even thought about communicators. The Faceless and the Alliance used entirely different methods and frequencies (a product of secrecy because of the war.) The Block used a frequency within that of the Alliance and Yoongi was going to put that tattoo on Taehyung as soon as they got back on the ground.

The moon Jimin called home was tiny—even tinier after a Faceless raid. Scans indicated that they hadn’t left anyone alive and only a few buildings were left standing. Jimin was pale as he read the readouts, lips pressed into a thin line.

“You don’t have to leave the ship,” Taehyung said, wrapping an arm Jimin’s shoulder, “I can go and get everything I need by myself.”

“No. I should go—I should get some of my things…see if there’s anything left.”

There were a few docking bays left mostly intact near Jimin’s former home and Yoongi was grateful for the small size of the Faceless craft. Had it been any larger they wouldn’t have been able to safely land, most of the ground cracked with magic, some of them deep enough for the bottoms to be lost in darkness.

The moon was an utter wasteland. Clearly no one from Polaris had been out here to clean because the smell was unbelievably atrocious, noticeable even before they got out of the space craft.

“Are you sure about this?” Yoongi asked, “You can make a list of things for us to find.”

Jimin only shook his head.

None of the readings indicate problems with the air, aside from the smell, but they take masks anyway, cold plastic settling over their nose and mouth and filtering the air. Yoongi would have done it with magic if he had all his tattoos but this would have to do.

Taehyung held Jimin’s hand as they walked out and Yoongi could see their skin turning white from the force of it.

“Okay. Ready?”

“No,” Jimin said, but hit the latch release on the door anyway.


	5. Flesh

_Wings_ was infinitely larger than the _Butterfly_. They all had their own bunks on _Wings_ , save for Namjoon and Seokjin, who shared the largest one, plus a couple spares in case they took extra crew on missions. None of the metal was rusted or burned from attacks, and two people could walk abreast through the corridors without bumping shoulders.

But even then, it had character: bright green stains on the ceiling from the time Namjoon had mistaken one of Hoseok’s chemical experiments for a re-heatable dinner and a dent in the door of the hatch from the time Jungkook had thrown a rock they’d thought was useless but had turned out to be a lump of diamond. And then there were the designs. Often, Namjoon and Yoongi would suddenly get inspiration for a tattoo design in the middle of a conversation and would use magic to burn the idea into the wall or the floor or even the ceiling (if the gravity happened to be turned off.) Their work was littered throughout the ship and Jungkook always ran his fingers over the various circles and squares and triggers as he walked.

Someday, he would burn his ideas into this ship, too.

“Jin, how are we looking?”

The first two sets of coordinates they scouted were empty. Whatever Faceless bases or ships had once existed were long gone, not even a trace of magic left anywhere. The next one was busier, but didn’t have enough space for any kind of detention center. Jungkook was slightly alarmed at the number of Faceless ships present and he hadn’t even been old enough to truly experience the last war. He couldn’t imagine the amount of panic it might be causing Seokjin and Namjoon. Granted, Namjoon wasn’t too much older than Jungkook but he’d been thrust into the war very early given his penchant for brilliant tattoo designs, and it had affected him (and Seokjin) rather severely.

“They’re a little more…numerous than I would have thought,” Jungkook said, carefully gauging reactions.

“If the next base is like that one, I’m sending a message to Jiho,” Namjoon said, “We’ll have to figure out some way to let the Alliance know about these bases without cluing them into the map…at least not until we’ve searched them all and found Yoongi.”

“Oh, well, we ‘accidentally’ stumbled upon them,” Hoseok said, making air quotes, “gosh, what a shock that was.”

“No one with a brain would ever believe that,” Namjoon frowned.

“Especially not the Dragon,” Jungkook said.

Namjoon nodded. “Jin, how long until the next base?”

“A half hour. This one doesn’t look busy either, but it’s definitely big enough to hide some secrets. There’s a lot of magical interference, though, so I won’t be able to get a good reading on the specifics of any structures or heat signatures.”

“Then we’ll just have to find a way to land.”

“Gonna be a bit rocky,” Seokjin said, but he was already scanning through his readouts.

“Are there no flat surfaces at all?”

“I _just said_ —ugh. You know what, never mind. I can land, but beyond that I don’t know what’s down there.”

Namjoon waited, as if hoping Seokjin was kidding. But then he sighed, running a hand through his hair and beckoning to Jungkook. “C’mon. We better prepare for the worst.”

“I’m gonna start running interference too, Namjoon, if you don’t start listening to me!”

“The _worst_ ,” Namjoon repeated, loud enough to carry back down the hall they were walking down and reach the cockpit. But he was grinning in a way that meant if they survived today, Jungkook was going to make sure he wore earplugs to bed.

—

Somehow, despite all the shielding, Seokjin managed to navigate them without attracting any attention, at least that they were able to detect. Namjoon patted his shoulder and did some navigating of his own, namely, to kiss Seokjin’s cheeks until he was smiling again. Jungkook felt vaguely nauseous watching and decided it was best if he left them alone and instead, waited at the _Wings_ main hatch with Hoseok.

“Is Joon groveling?” he asked.

Jungkook could only sigh and Hoseok sniggered, finding Jungkook’s misery hilarious. Bastard.

“At least we landed first?” Hoseok offered.

“I guess.”

“Don’t be snooty just because Yoongi’s not here to share in your eye-rolling.”

“I’m not being snooty. We’re on a _mission._ ”

“We are. But that doesn’t mean we should have to deal with a Namjoon that doesn’t have time to kiss his Seokjin. Let me tell you, kiddo, that is a dark and terrible Kim Namjoon that no one wants to see, especially when we’re about to infiltrate a Faceless hideout.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“Okay,” Hoseok agreed, far too easily, “whatever you say.”

Jungkook frowned. Yoongi was the one to start calling him that and Jungkook hadn’t minded then but with Hoseok it felt…different. Still, he wasn’t dumb enough to push it, and stayed quiet until Namjoon and Seokjin came down the walk way. Namjoon was grinning from ear to ear and Seokjin’s cheeks were slightly flushed.

“Finally,” Jungkook said.

Seokjin whacked the back of his head.

Hoseok cackled, materializing a gun from orange blocks of magic sprouting from tattoos on his forefinger and thumb. “What are we looking at here?”

“It’s a massive complex. But I think what we want is on the other side of it because all I’m reading in the building are ships and enough people to pilot them.”

“There’s a mountain on the other side.”

“Yeah, but it’s a _cavernous_ mountain and it’s heavily shielded. As far as I’m concerned that means it’s hiding something. I vote we start there.”

“I assume you have a way for us to sneak inside?’

Seokjin smirked. “Of course.”

“And you’re fine leaving _Wings_ unattended? Despite not wanting to leave it alone with Heechul?”

“Heechul was aware of us being there and we weren’t trying to be stealthy. We are hidden now and I trust the tattoos Joon designed for cloaking one hundred percent. Do you?”

Hoseok held a hand over his heart, fake hurt. “You wound me. I was only double checking.”

Seokjin did not looked convinced, but he pulled out a data pad, tattoos sliding down his skin, and a 3D map spilled out in front of them. “So, this is where we are.” A little red X swirled into place at the tip of Seokjin’s finger, “and this is the mountain, over here.”

The plan was straight forward and simple. Basic ducking and dodging and full of Hoseok using his smile to charm people out of their way while Namjoon hacked into their systems to get them around locked doors: a typical Seokjin plan and one that always worked.

Jungkook didn’t have much to do besides keep his eyes open and his tattoos ready to activate in case they were discovered.

The base itself didn’t seem too spectacular. It was like any out of the way hub station that provided comfortable lodging and ship maintenance for deep space travelers, save for the fact that inhabitants wore Faceless uniforms and the ships were peach-colored.

“You’re scowling,” Seokjin said.

“I’m trying to look like I belong.”

“Well, stop. It’s making people stare and you’re spacing out.”

Jungkook’s pretty positive that was all the Faceless did behind their masks: scowl. They were angry, entitled assholes that said whatever they wanted and did whatever they wanted and made life difficult for everyone but themselves. That equaled scowling, in Jungkook’s mind, but he didn’t like being lectured so he schooled his features and followed Hoseok through a massive archway. Somehow, he had conned a female technician into giving them a tour of…of whatever this facility was. Jungkook hadn’t really been paying attention.

So maybe Seokjin had a point.

“Oh, that’s—no, sorry, you can’t head in there. It’s restricted. But if you come this way, I’ll be happy to show you some of our newer ship models. We’ve really upgraded since the last war.”

“Fascinating,” Hoseok said, leaning in closer to her.

Jungkook could see her blush as it rose up her cheeks. He didn’t know how Hoseok managed it (and it was _not_ just because he got distracted, thank you very much,) but ten minutes later they were standing in front of the restricted area, the girl long gone.

Namjoon had the door open in seconds and they slid through it, sprinting down a hallway as soon as he gave them the go ahead. It wasn’t well lit and it wasn’t very long. They were at the end of it in no time, none of them even breathing hard from running.

“Through here?” Jungkook asked. This door wasn’t as large, but it took Hoseok twice as long to crack, his tongue peeking out of the corner of his mouth in concentration.

Seokjin checked the map. “This is definitely it.”

Goosebumps spread across Jungkook’s skin the second they stepped inside the cavern; there was no other word to describe it. The atmosphere was moist, heavy in his lungs and the smell of chemicals stung the inside of his nose with every breath. His skin itched.

It wasn’t exactly dark—Jungkook could see the glow of light here and there, like little contained boxes of magic, but it was as if everything had blurred and he couldn’t exactly see straight.

Jungkook had tattoos for light but they weren’t very strong. Namjoon’s were, enhanced over the years with different little modifiers for different types of illumination, though still not as proficient as some magicians who worked with light only, able to actually bend rays themselves and create illusions or become invisible.

Tiny little balls formed at Namjoon’s fingertips, whirling into existence before he shot them up into the air, dozens sailing throughout the room, the yellow glow spreading slowly so as not to momentarily blind them, everything easing into focus.

Jungkook held his breath.

It looked like a maze. Not one of stone or of wood, but of glass. Tanks. They were magically augmented tanks full of water, little devices in the corners sending puffs of colored liquid into the water (or gas—sometimes it bubbled, or magic—sometimes it sparkled.) Namjoon brightened his lights and Jungkook squinted into the nearest container, starting as he realized that inside and held suspended in the water were drawings. Tattoos.

Squares, circles, and Triggers, each drawn with precision. Different inks, different colors, each etched onto a thick sort of paper that didn’t really look like paper at all.

Jungkook blinked.

“Oh, stars,” Hoseok whispered, “is that…is that _skin_?”

Distantly, Jungkook registers the sound of Seokjin throwing up somewhere behind him and Namjoon’s lights faded a little, attention turning to his husband as he reeled from the shock.

“Is all this…?” Jungkook can’t find it in himself to finish his sentence.

There were at least a thousand tanks in here, all piled on top of one another, connected with tubes, chemicals flowing from one to another—preservatives, he now assumed. And in them, tattoos. Tattoos of every model and design, with simple triggers and complicated ones, all of them—every single sketch—inked onto flesh. Flesh that was no doubt pulled from magicians they had captured. Hundreds upon thousands of them, stretched out like ancient animal skin furs, every hue of skin Jungkook could have ever imagined…and then some. A few looked _blue_. Some were clearly starting to decay, despite the chemicals and magic.

“Do not come down here,” Hoseok called back to Seokjin.

Jungkook didn’t need to look back to know Seokjin was still held tight in Namjoon’s arms. He had known many magicians that died because their tattoos had been peeled off and they had been left to bleed out; this must be ten times worse for him to see than it was for Jungkook.

Behind him, Hoseok pulled out a holograph recorder and began to document everything.

Why there weren’t any guards or Faceless in here Jungkook didn’t know. But he’d take it. He didn’t think Yoongi was here anymore and that was a relief as this entire place was terrifying and morbid.

Half way down the first aisle, Jungkook got close enough to notice tiny little tiles on each tank, bearing names. He initially didn’t recognize them, but a quick scan backwards and a few steps forward confirmed they were mostly alphabetical.

Anxiety clawed at his stomach. “Hyung,” Jungkook said, “do you think…do you think…” He couldn’t finish it but Hoseok’s sharp intake of breath confirmed he’d just had the same thought.

Jungkook began to run.

There were some Gs. H I. J. K. L.

M.

Mac. Menay. Mia.

Min.

_Min Yoongi_. Jungkook had to read it ten times over before the words, the _name_ , actually processed (his heart hammering, panic rising up his throat,) and he was screaming, yelling for Namjoon and wondering _does that mean he’s here? Does that mean he’s dead?_ He didn’t think about all the noise he must be making as he banged his fists against the glass or that they were probably all going to get caught and executed by Faceless soldiers. He saw a name and he needed answers.

“Jungkook! Jungkook, stop it, they’ll hear! What is wrong? What—oh stars. Shit. Shit, those _starsburned_ assholes.”

Someone yanked him to the ground, arms tight around his chest and he sucked in dirt and chemicals, hacking as he was held still. “Calm down, Jungkook. Calm down. This isn’t helping. Seokjin, Seokjin, help me keep him quiet.”

Logic told Jungkook he needed to stop screaming. But his heart hurt and he was _angry_ and someone— _anyone_ —needed to pay for this. Jeon Jungkook was going to make someone pay.

“Jungkook, _stop_. They aren’t his tattoos. Jungkook, they’re just his sketches. Jungkook, _listen to me_.”

Someone lifted him, hand around his mouth, and pressed his face to the glass. Namjoon spoke right into his ear. “Look. Look at them, Jungkook. Look at how basic they are, how generic. It’s not his skin. They just took his designs and _inked them onto someone else._ ”

It took a moment for it to process. It took effort to stop sobbing, effort to keep himself upright and get a good look at the ink. It took effort to make his brain turn from panic mode into detective mode.

“Look at those and tell me if you think Yoongi’s ink work would honestly be that sloppy.”

They _were_ lackluster. They were definitely Yoongi’s designs, but they weren’t any that looked like the ones Yoongi had on his body. He’d drawn these, but they weren’t _his_.

Jungkook’s legs turned to jelly in his relief and it was Seokjin that caught him, hand on his back as his stomach finally betrayed him. “Oh, Jungkook. It’s okay. Let it out. Wow, that’s two of us. Maybe Namjoon and Hoseok should join in, let these bastards finds bit of _us_ everywhere.”

“Gross, babe.”

Jungkook wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and accepted Seokjin’s mouthful of conjured water gratefully.

“Sorry,” he said, suddenly feeling a little ashamed at his overreaction, “I should have controlled myself better.”

“It’s okay. This is hard. We’re all—we’re all upset.”

It wasn’t okay by a long shot (because they were all basically dead at this point,) but now was not the time to argue about it. “What does this mean?” He asked, righting himself and sliding away from the mess he’d left on the floor. It _was_ satisfying to think of some Faceless soldier forced to clean it up. Served them right.

“I’m not exactly sure.” Namjoon was staring into the tank, hand outstretched as he concentrated his lights for a better look at the designs. “But if I had to hazard a guess, the Faceless are making Yoongi draw designs and they’re inking them onto people. After that…well, either they work so they pull the skin off to study them or they don’t work and they still pull them off. Or maybe it’s both. Hard to say, really.”

“I can’t imagine Yoongi would draw for them.”

“Not willingly, no.”

“So the question is, do the Faceless know and not care? Or does it not matter?”

Namjoon sighed, sounding resigned. “They might just be studying _Yoongi._ How he works and draws. They’re probably trying to extrapolate his more complicated designs from the way he creates simpler ones.”

“Like being bulletproof.”

“They know he’d die before telling them how that works,” Namjoon nodded, “so they’re trying to get it out of him without him realizing it. If he’s just trying to stay alive, he most likely hasn’t noticed.”

Starsburned bastards.

“I think we’ve overstayed our welcome,” Seokjin said. “Wherever Yoongi is, it’s not on this base.”

“I agree,” Namjoon said, “he’s being held elsewhere. They wouldn’t do this all in one place, it’s too risky.”

Throwing a final look at the tank, Namjoon reached out for Seokjin’s hands and they took the lead, picking their way back to the cavern’s entrance carefully. “How’re we looking?”

“Heat signatures on the other side of the door,” Seokjin said, scrutinizing his map carefully, “they know we’re here. Doesn’t look like they’ve found _Wings_ yet, though.”

Jungkook felt obligated to apologize again; Hoseok patted his shoulder. “Just kill a few Faceless, alright?”

That, Jungkook could do.

They’d done this so many times no one needed to say anything. Hoseok and Jungkook lifted themselves up above the door, using magic to balance themselves in a perfect ambushing position while Namjoon and Seokjin took one side of the entrance each.

It was just in time.

Faceless poured through the doorway, magic blazing, guns glowing, a whole squadron fanning out before realizing there wasn’t anyone in front of them. But it was too late. Namjoon and Seokjin’s weapons took out five of them before Hoseok and Jungkook dropped like stones. Hoseok’s gun nabbed two, and by the time the squad had turned around, Jungkook had his sword out, the edge blazing with magic and he swung it, lobbing off three heads in the space of as many seconds.

Jungkook loved magic.

“Drop!” Hoseok yelled.

Jungkook got out of the way just in time for Hoseok to fire a bazooka into the middle of the Faceless, the blast blowing back into the tanks behind them and cracking, water and flesh spilling out onto the floor. Jungkook _loved_ the bazooka tattoo.

“I want one!” He yelled, as they sprinted down the hallway.

“Greedy,” Hoseok accused, and turned around to fire through a Faceless mask. A gun shot at him in return, but with his bulletproof shielding up, the only thing it did was make him laugh.

They ran.

—

Namjoon had Seokjin pressed to a bulkhead the second they were safely in the air, lips finding lips (and jawbones, and necks, and collarbones,) and Jungkook grit his teeth. He didn’t want to be mad. It wasn’t them he was upset at, after all. But he was vibrating with adrenaline and still really emotional. So before he could stop himself he was talking.

“Could you fucking _not?”_

Hoseok lost his concentration on magic, gun vanishing. Namjoon pulled away to raise an eyebrow him. “Excuse me?”

“Joon,” Seokjin chided, “stop it. It’s fine. We have a room for a reason.”

“And I intend on using it, eventually. I just wanted to kiss you first. Problem with that, Jungkook?”

Jungkook cocked his hip. “What if I do?”

“Okay,” Hoseok, said, “wow, aren’t we all emotional and irritated right now! Namjoon, maybe go take a shower. You have Faceless blood all over you. Jungkook, remember what I said about Namjoon kissing Seokjin and how it isn’t something you stop. Like _ever_?”

“Well, maybe if they—“

Normally, Jungkook wasn’t someone that could be yanked off balance. But Hoseok was good at kicking ass when he wanted to be and Jungkook was entirely caught off guard. He found himself shoved down the _Wings_ corridor and into his bunk, Hoseok’s finger in his face. “Cool off,” he ordered, “and then come and apologize.”

For three seconds, as Hoseok shut the door in his face, Jungkook considered storming back out to argue. But then he remembered they had several more bases to search and that Namjoon was Captain and that he loved Seokjin with all of his heart—Seokjin, who had just had to relive his worst nightmares—and the guilt came crashing down.

He was an idiot.

Sullenly, and with a sense of dread—because he hated fucking up like this—Jungkook changed out of his clothes and took a few minutes to step under a spray of water; Namjoon wasn’t the only one covered in blood.

When he got out, throwing on a fresh outfit, Seokjin was waiting for him on his bed.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” Jungkook said. “Um.”

“Come and sit. I just want to talk.”

Tentatively, Jungkook did as asked. “Sorry,” he muttered, “for being an asshole.”

“Well, I’m not happy about it. But it kind of seems like it’s been a reoccurring theme for awhile. Since Yoongi was taken, actually.”

Jungkook was feeling increasingly like a five year old and he bit back the urge to kick his feet against the floor.

“Jungkook, if we make you uncomfortable you can tell me. Namjoon and I don’t have to kiss in front of you. We can tone it down.”

“No, that’s not—I don’t mind.”

“Are you sure? Because you roll your eyes whenever we get affectionate and make faces whenever Joon brags about the marks he leaves and Hoseok said you were a little grumpy about it after we landed.”

_Traitor_ , Jungkook thought, frown deepening. “It’s fine. I didn’t mean for it to seem like I care. I mean, I do! I like you both, I swear. It’s—whatever. I’ll deal with it. It’s fine.” He paused, heart suddenly pounding in his chest. He wet his lips. “Please don’t kick me out of the crew.”

“Oh, Jungkook, we aren’t going to do that. We could never. We want you here, with us. We like to push each others buttons a lot, and joke around in public, but more than anything we want you to be happy.”

Seokjin slid a little closer, laid a hand down on top of Jungkook’s. He was always so perceptive and Jungkook wanted to be frustrated with him but it was difficult, the confession right on the tip of his tongue. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Jungkook took a deep breath.

“I just. I was so _dumb_. He took such good care of me and I wasted our time together on a stupid crush.”

“Oh, Jungkook.”

He hadn’t exactly hid his feeling from the rest of them, but he hadn’t ever said it out loud either. Yoongi had probably told Namjoon, after Jungkook had stuttered through a confession and Yoongi had patted his head: _I’m sorry, kiddo, but I don’t love you like that. You’re so sweet and I’m so glad you’re with us, but I can’t. It wouldn’t be fair to you._ Stars, Jungkook was so dumb.

“I’m such an idiot.”

“That’s not true.”

“It _is_. I just. I would look at you and Namjoon and wish we could be like that. I wanted it so bad and I spent so much time thinking about getting it in the future that I wasn’t happy to just have a friend. I thought surely, _surely_ , I could make him fall in love with me.”

Seokjin squeezed his hand.

“But I couldn’t and I kept trying to prove myself and in the end I fucked up and he was taken from me. I ruined everything.”

“It is not your fault that he was captured. You know that.”

“But isn’t it? I was so caught up in him I wasn’t practicing my magic or tattoos. I wasn’t good enough to save him.”

“Jungkook,” Seokjin said, and he sounded so patient, so kind. Normally that would irk Jungkook because he didn’t need a _parent_ , but he was so distressed it was actually kind of calming, “Jungkook, Yoongi is a kick-ass magician. He’s one of the best. There wasn’t anything you could have done.”

“You weren’t there.”

“I didn’t have to be. He’s the best, and despite you saying that you dropped the ball on studying, you’re pretty good yourself. Namjoon wouldn’t have hired you for our crew otherwise. You’re the Block’s Golden Boy. Stars, Jungkook, do you know how many times Jiho’s told Namjoon he hates that you were stolen away from him?”

Jungkook was _not_ going to cry.

“You’re so talented, all on your own, truly. Everyone knows it and no one—not a single person on the Block, least of all Hoseok or Joon or me—blames you for what happened. Okay? And if I know Yoongi—which I do—he doesn’t blame you either.”

“He could be dead. He probably _is_ dead, skin peeled off and stuck in some Faceless experimentation tank—“

“He isn’t. He isn’t because if the Faceless had killed one of the Bulletproof they’d be bragging about it. If he was dead, his body would have been sent to the Block because that is what they do. They brag and intimidate and flaunt.”

Seokjin tilted Jungkook’s head up to look him in the eye. “We’re going to find him. He’s alive and we’re going to find him and then you get to start building a sincere friendship. Okay?”

Jungkook closed his eyes, ignored the way his breath hitched and he had to blink his eyes to clear them. “Okay.”

“Jungkook, you’re irreplaceable to us. Don’t forget that.”

He bit his cheek. “Yeah.”

They were quiet for a moment, each in their own thoughts, Seokjin pulling Jungkook in close for a hug. It was nice; Jungkook hadn’t had a decent hug in a long while.

Finally, Seokjin sniggered. “You’re so cute. I can’t believe you were just jealous of us. Hobi’s gonna die laughing.”

Jungkook was never going to tell Seokjin anything ever again.


	6. Code

Jimin made it to his former house before he broke down into tears. The whole city was an unbelievable mess. Nothing was alive—there weren’t even roaches or flies—and it was still so hot they’d had to go back onto the ship for protective gear.

That made Yoongi very nervous. Usually, after this length of time, the effects of an attack would have cooled down. But it had been _weeks_. Either the Faceless had come back for a second (possibly third) run, or the first had been so terrible the fires had burned out of control and the magic had sunk into the moon, taking on a life of its own. Neither option was particularly better than the other and Yoongi was already itching to get off this rock. He didn’t like weird phenomena he couldn’t explain, and he was already planning ways to inform of this Jiho about this once they got back. He’d want to send some scientists over immediately to gather data.

“I’m so sorry,” Taehyung said, “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”

There wasn’t anything for Jimin to take. Everything was burned or melted beyond repair, though he retrieved a misshapen lump of gold he said used to be a family heirloom (it took some effort to transport it back to the ship without burning their hands off.) “I’ll smelt it back down and make something out of it. To remember them. I’ll learn how.”

“That’s so nice,” Taehyung said, petting Jimin’s hair, “that’s perfect. I knew a goldsmith once. I can help you.”

Of course, since there was nothing there that was useful, there wasn’t an Alliance communicator to find. Yoongi wished he had paid more attention when Jiho had taught him how to turn one type into the other. Yoongi almost expected Taehyung to speak up and say, “I knew an engineer that could do that, I’ve got it,” but Taehyung didn’t and neither did Jimin which meant they needed to find another way.

It was the dumbest problem. Alliance ships had communicators on board that allowed them to contact Faceless vessels. But the Faceless didn’t believe in communication. If they showed up it wasn’t to talk it was to annihilate, so none of their tech or tattoos integrated with anything from the Alliance. It had also been done for exactly the dilemma Yoongi was facing now—no one escaping in stolen ships would be able to contact anyone from any other faction. But Yoongi wasn’t just anyone and he refused to let this hinder him. They had escaped, they were heading towards freedom, and he’d think of something. He always did.

They had a day, at least. After they all cleaned up and scrubbed off whatever grime they had on their skin.

The ship was too small for multiple shower heads, unlike _Wings_ , a fact which Yoongi, in his own semi-conscious state of exhaustion, almost forgot. He was about to follow Taehyung into the bathroom before remembering they’d have to share a single spray of water and making an abrupt u-turn straight back to the cockpit to check on the instruments there.

Seeing Taehyung naked was probably not something that needed to happen just then. Yoongi’s imagination was pretty good and from the way his dick seemed to be really interested in a naked Taehyung, it was best he stayed out here lest he completely embarrass himself.

He stared out at the stars until Jimin came to get him. “You can clean up now. I’m gonna try and sleep if that’s okay.”

“Whatever you need,” Yoongi said, “Taehyung and I can handle everything.”

He made sure Jimin really did fall asleep before he made use of the Faceless shower. It took a moment for him to figure out the controls, but then it’s blessedly warm and he scrubbed his skin until it was pink. It was a vastly different wash than one at the prison. He didn’t even have to put his stolen Faceless coveralls back on, finding instead some non descriptive clothing hidden away on the ship that fit relatively well.

Jimin was still sleeping by the time Yoongi finished, so he joined Taehyung at the controls, watching as he tested them out and plotted the next part of their course.

“I’ve mostly figured it out,” Taehyung said, “I can drop us at the Block whenever you’re ready.”

“We need a plan for communication,” Yoongi reiterated, “or we’ll get blasted out of the sky.”

Taehyung nodded. “I still don’t know how to make the communications array tune into Alliance frequencies.”

“I knew during the war,” Yoongi told him, “But I’ve since forgotten. It’s complicated and requires tattoos I no longer have and don’t remember know how to ink. We’ll have to think of a different way. In the meantime, let’s just monitor the Faceless as they talk on their frequencies so we can stay one step ahead of them.”

“Should have saved that arm,” Taehyung mused, “maybe it had a useful tattoo for Alliance communications on there somewhere.”

It definitely would not have, but even then Yoongi’s not sure if walking around with a severed arm was worth the possibility of getting the communicators to work. Maybe he was too tired to properly weigh those options. “Nap?” he suggested, for an absolute lack of anything else to say. How did one even segue from severed arms to anything else in the entire world without being awkward?

He certainly couldn’t, because Taehyung’s acquiescing laugh was an incredibly strange one.

Still, it was bordering on far too long since they had shut their eyes. And they’d be safe. Space was expansive, the distance between stars so large no one would ever accidentally come across them, at least not if they just cruised along for a few hours in the general direction of Dragon Space. There were no planets, no moons; they were alone, at least for a little while.

“Your hair is fading,” Taehyung said.

Yoongi unconsciously ran his fingers through it. “Yeah. I’m gonna have Namjoon redo it when we get back. Gotta uphold my image and all that. Think I might change the shade a little, though. Mint is going to forever remind me of that starsburned shithole of a planet.”

Taehyung reached out, his fingers already glowing with the color tattoo Yoongi had inked onto him. “I could do it for you. I was very good at it with my old design and I can already tell this one is better.”

If he had wanted, Yoongi could have stated several reasons as to why Taehyung coloring his hair was a bad idea, not the least of which was that they had so many more important things to worry about so why waste the energy? But Yoongi didn’t want to do that because the blankets were warm and Taehyung looked like he might be warm too and even in the shitty ship lighting Taehyung was really attractive. But in the glow of magic Taehyung looked ethereal and there was literally nothing in the galaxy—short of death—that could keep Yoongi from saying no.

Yoongi’s skin tingled as Taehyung thread his fingers into Yoongi’s hair and combed through it. Sparks shot down Yoongi’s spine and his body thrummed as he felt the magic spread across his head. He had a tiny flyaway thought that he hadn’t specified a new color for Taehyung to try but it was lost as his heart hammered and Taehyung’s hands massaged his scalp. Yoongi could feel the blood rushing to his cheeks in some strange form of embarrassment and then draining right to his crotch as Taehyung’s fingertips sunk magic into him and made everything feel good.

It was a little crazy. If Yoongi hadn’t just drawn all of Taehyung’s tattoos he wouldn’t believe this was just the color magic. (Of course, it wasn’t. It was also _Taehyung_ that Yoongi had sat beside for two cycles and with whom he had escaped prison and whom Yoongi considered devastatingly attractive.) Yoongi had to bite his cheek to keep from moaning.

Yoongi was never going to tell anyone about this. Yoongi was never going to acknowledge this happened.

“There,” Taehyung said. He sounded a breathless but Yoongi knew it was just his dumb imagination. He was being _dumb_. “Gorgeous.”

_Gorgeous_. Stars, Taehyung was trying to murder him with kindness. Yoongi was not going to have any of it.

But he still needed to take a deep breath (because Taehyung’s hands weren’t leaving his hair, twisting it around his fingers like he was styling it with gel,) and keep his hands over his dick (because his dick really liked Taehyung this close and also really liked Taehyung’s long, tapered fingers on his skin.) And okay. Maybe all of Yoongi really liked Taehyung, including his traitorously pounding heart.

Yoongi was _never_ going to tell anyone that.

There wasn’t a mirror in the bunk, but that was fine, because Yoongi was sure his face looked like shit and he didn’t need a reminder of everything he’d done in the past two cycles. But it was reflective enough for him to get an idea of the color.

“It’s still mint.”

“It looks really, really good on you. A bad experience shouldn’t taint that.”

_Really, really good_ …Yoongi was doomed.

He made himself busy by setting a few parameters so the ship would warn them if anything got too close, _just in case_ , and then followed Taehyung out of the cockpit. There was only one room with bunks on the ship and since Jimin was already passed out in one and they didn’t want to wake him, they slipped in quietly. Yoongi realized his mistake too late; there was only one bed left.

But Taehyung didn’t seem to mind, even reaching out to tug Yoongi down onto it beside him.

“Let’s sleep,” Taehyung said, plopping down onto the mattress, “lay down. I need a pillow.”

There were _plenty_ of pillows for Kim Taehyung to use, but apparently those were unacceptable shapes (or perhaps levels of softness.) Since Yoongi was now unable to say no to anything that had to do with Kim Taehyung, he found himself being squished against the wall, Taehyung’s leg thrown over him and his face buried in Yoongi’s neck.

He was sure he wouldn’t get a wink of sleep, but as soon as he closed his eyes he felt himself getting sleepy and somehow, among the haze of Taehyung’s scent and the feel of his body plastered to Yoongi’s, he managed to drift off.

—

Yoongi woke to Jimin shaking him urgently. “Get up. Yoongi! Wake up, we have a problem.”

“S’wrong?” Taehyung slurred. His breath warmed Yoongi’s neck.

Their limbs were still tangled together and Yoongi’s eyes were having trouble focusing. He rubbed them. “Jimin?”

“Faceless broadcast. Wake _up._ We need to get to the Block. _Now.”_

It took a minute for them to get their brain juices flowing in the right direction, but Taehyung was soon trying to get the message playing back, and Yoongi felt the blood drain from his face as Jimin gave him a summary. “They’re attacking the Block?”

“They probably think that’s where you went. They probably think you’re already there and that the galaxy knows they’re coming.”

“Except they _don’t_ know. No one knows this many Faceless still exist!”

“It’s not just that,” Jimin said. “It’s a whole fleet of ships. Not just these small little fighters but actual battle cruisers. And they aren’t being piloted by the Faceless.”

“What do you mean?”

“This whole plan rests on only a few actual cruisers full of Faceless. The rest are all prisoners being forced to man the ships. We have an _hour_ before they get to the Block.”

Yoongi hated every single starsburned Faceless. Cowards, the lot of them. Evil pieces of actual shit. “The Block is going to rip those ships to shreds. They’re going to kill all the people we’ve been trying to find.”

Taehyung let out a frustrated breath. “What do we do?”

“We have to find a way to let the Block know,” Yoongi said. “If they’re aware that Faceless are coming then they’ll have time to prepare and they’ll end up killing all the innocent people. If they don’t know they’re coming then the Block gets blown out of the sky.”

Which option was worse?

“We need a find a way to do both. Get them ready for an attack but also tell them not to destroy the ships. Maiming only.”

But how to do that?

“Well,” Taehyung said, “We don’t necessarily have to do both at the same time.”

“Uh…yes we do?”

“What would be the protocol on the Block if a ship suddenly dropped in front of it, fired off a few shots, and then disappeared?”

“Lockdown,” Yoongi replied immediately, “and an immediate distress signal to all allied ships in the area if they feel that the situation’s serious enough to warrant aid. But that’s rare. Space around the Block is purposefully tricky. Jiho has a floating mine field set up around it that is impossible to navigate without knowing the design. So any ship that doesn’t have the current layout has to jump outside of magical range and then fly in at normal speeds.”

“Smart,” Taehyung said, “but you know the layout, right?”

“I can bypass the system. The Bulletproof all have tattoos that allow us to jump right in front of the docking bay.” Although they couldn’t all use them. Namjoon had never quite mastered the technique and wasn’t allowed to pilot any ship, never mind jump Jiho’s mines, unless it was an absolute emergency.

Taehyung nodded. “Do you think the Faceless can?”

“Probably safe to assume they have one magician that’s confident enough to do so, otherwise it wouldn’t be much of a surprise attack.” Yoongi didn’t want to think about the meaning of that too hard because either someone had squealed or they’d gotten a captain and ripped his tattoo off.

“Okay. So assuming you can do that with a Faceless ship, we might be able to jump to the Block, get off a few non-life threatening shots, and then jump away in order to get them to put up their shields.”

“You want me to _fire_ on the Block? On _Woo Jiho? On purpose?”_ Yoongi’s mouth was going dry just thinking about it.

“We just escaped a Faceless prison but you’re scared of one commander?” Taehyung looked genuinely surprised.

“Yes,” Yoongi said, stomach twisting, “and you should be too.”

“I thought you said they’d tear us to pieces,” Jimin said, “I thought we were trying to find a way to communicate with them.”

“This is communicating with them,” Taehyung insisted, “we were worried about it taking too long and the Block using that time to finish us off. But this way, we only need to be there a few seconds. This way we don’t die and also make sure they have their shields up and guns manned in time for the Faceless fleet.”

“That is the most insane—“ Yoongi started.

“And after?” Jimin pressed, “we’re still in a Faceless ship. What then? How do we tell them not to blow up the ships? Smoke signals?”

“Actually, I had an idea earlier,” Taehyung said, holding up his hand, the color tattoo sliding up his arm to rest on his index finger, “I was thinking more along the lines of painting a sign.”

—

Jiho was going to murder him. There was no around it. It was going to be painful and last as long as possible. Then, he’d find a way to preserve Yoongi’s mutilated body and put it on display so every ship passing it on the way to the Block would learn from his mistakes.

Woo Jiho did not take kindly to people that attacked the Block.

But Yoongi didn’t have time to think of another way. Namjoon could have, and probably even Jungkook, the clever little shit, but Yoongi didn’t have them here. He had Taehyung and his crazy plan and it was going to have to work.

“What I want to know,” Taehyung said, as they did a last minute systems check, “is how the brilliant Block leaders didn’t have a scenario worked out for this sort of thing. Like a secret signal or sign in order to indicate allies.”

“We did during the war,” Yoongi admitted, “but too many of us got captured and the information was always leaking. Plus, back then we all remembered how to change one type of communicator into another. I forgot because I didn’t ever think I’d have to do it again. We’re not military. We’re a bunch of merchants and smugglers that banded together to keep each other safe. Ingenious ones, perhaps, but at the end of the day it’s every man for himself…every crew for itself. It’s easier that way.”

“Dumber that way,” Taehyung muttered. His pout was adorable; Yoongi shook his head to clear it.

“In hindsight, perhaps. But wrangling everyone that comes and goes on the Block is more difficult than you might imagine, especially now that Jiho’s made it into such a massive trading hub. Though perhaps after this, we’ll give it another try.”

If they survived this. If Woo Jiho didn’t lop off Yoongi’s head. “If this works,” he said out loud.

They had fifteen minutes, according to Faceless broadcasts. Yoongi was piloting, Taehyung was at the guns, and Jimin was keeping an eye on literally everything else. But they were not going to need all that time. Yoongi guessed that after he jumped he would have thirty seconds before someone fired back at him. And that was only if Jiho or Kyung were not in the command center and only if none of the other captains were in their ships. But that was fine. Yoongi only needed five seconds to get them in position and Taehyung only need half a second to fire.

“Taehyung, remember—“

“No direct hits. Yes, sir, Mr. Bulletproof.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Yes, captain.”

_Namjoon is the captain,_ Yoongi wanted to say, but swallowed it down. This was a mission and he was in charge of it, even if it was Taehyung’s idea.

The Block will hold off the Faceless Fleet for awhile. Time enough for them to slip into the mess and for Taehyung to start marking off the ships that held civilians and not soldiers. This Faceless fighter was too small for any sort of writing on the hull to be visible to anyone on the Block, especially in the middle of a battle. But Taehyung thinks the cruisers will be large enough and they don’t move as fast, which will give the Block—and any ships called back for reinforcements—time to read them.

Initially, Yoongi had thought of having Taehyung just plaster “full of civilians” on the cruisers, but Jiho would probably think it’s a ruse to get him to stop firing and completely ignore it. He could draw out the basic bulletproof tattoo design for Taehyung to paint, but that held the same problem. Plus, they’d probably just think the Faceless had finally killed Yoongi and were returning his body.

“We need something that will get both sides to freak out.”

“The Faceless might jump away if we’re too obvious.”

“We can disable their engines before the Block. We’ll be able to get close with this fighter.”

If they were in _Butterfly_ or _Wings_ they wouldn’t have to do this. If Yoongi had his old piloting tattoos he could drop in front of the Block and avoid all that fire power for hours until they figured out he wasn’t an enemy. But he didn’t have experience with this fighter and they didn’t have the time for that. It was this or nothing, and Yoongi’s decision had been made awhile ago.

“Do you think you could color the entire ship?”

“Right now?”

“No. After we slip into the Faceless fleet.”

Taehyung cocked his head. “Probably, yes. What color were you thinking?”

“Mint,” Yoongi said, with a smile, “ _My_ mint. You’re right about a few warning shots at the Block to get them to put up their shields. Even if we wrote out everything that we know, panic is going to be their first response and we won’t have enough time to convince them of anything. Even if we could, we still need to sneak into the fleet to figure out which ships have civilians and if you color the ship to match my hair too early it’ll blow our cover…but afterwards… _that_ the Block will notice, especially if they’re comparing us to the regular peach color and notice we’re not actually shooting at them.”

“It’s a good idea,” Jimin said.

“At the very least, it won’t take Kyung very long to put two and two together. If _Wings_ is there, Namjoon will figure it out fast, too. Especially since I’m sure that they’ve been looking for me.”

The only variable was time. Yoongi could do it…but how long would it take? How many lives would be lost before the Block figured it out? They could only work hard and hope for the best.

Taehyung leaned in and set Yoongi’s heart thundering as he wrapped his arms around his waist. “I can’t wait to meet them. You sound close. You’re a good team.”

“We’re a good team, too,” Yoongi said, and then thinking of Jiho again, added, “even if we’re probably going to die afterwards.”

“It’ll be fine,” Taehyung insisted, “wait and see.”

Yoongi took a deep breath, sliding his hands onto the console and pulling his hastily inked piloting tattoos to his fingertips. The jump itself didn’t take long, magic pouring from Yoongi’s hands, encapsulating the ship in a second, and then bent space around them.

They dropped directly in front of the Block in a shower of sparks. Taehyung whooped with delight and Yoongi angled them so they could get off a good shot.

He imagined the reactions of the control room as he counted down the seconds they had before someone got to the guns. It wasn’t difficult.

(—WHAT THE FUCK, _what is_ that _—IS THAT A FACELESS FIGHTER—someone comm Jiho—)_

Taehyung’s first shot came eerily close to the command center. It was perfect—a bolt meant to look like an accidental near miss.

(— _Lockdown everything, right now! Someone call the captains back. Shut down the docking bays. Where is someone with the right starsburned tattoos for this, why the fuck is everyone sleeping, no one ever sleeps on this hunk of metal so_ why now _—)_

The second shot followed as Yoongi made a hasty arc in the sky, trying to look like a Faceless pilot attempting to get better positioning. Taehyung aimed well, his magic getting even closer, but also narrowly missing a docking bay towards the back. The shields and metal armor started going up.

(—REPORT!— _Jiho_! Finally _, thank fuck! That ship jumped in past the mines—)_

“Time to go,” Yoongi said, priming for his jump, just as Jimin announced the Block’s weapons were loading. Yoongi could see the magic—it was definitely Jiho’s magic—a stark, vibrant yellow against the metal, swirling as it gathered.

Mission accomplished.

Yoongi breathed in deep, magic shooting through him, and then they were gone.

—

It didn’t take longer than ten minutes for the Faceless to assemble their fleet. If nothing else, they were good at sticking to a schedule.

Yoongi desperately hoped there were enough ships near to the Block to help defend it or it was going to be a real short battle that very few of them would survive. There were a lot more Faceless ships than he had anticipated, after all, cruiser after cruiser, with almost a hundred fighters stored in each one. The fighters, at least, weren’t being manned by prisoners, so Yoongi didn’t have to worry about them getting blasted away. They deserved it.

“This is easier to figure out than we thought,” Jimin said. He was really getting the hang of using the ship without having any tattoos. His fingers were flying over the console. “The Faceless are putting six ships of prisoners out in the front and they’re being remotely controlled by magicians in the cruisers behind them.”

“And the fighters?”

“Filling in the gaps. We should be able to jump in just fine.”

“Let’s wait until they start their assault just in case they’ll be able to recognize us as the fighter that blasted its way out of the work camp. We don’t want to be dead before we can do any good.”

It’s nerve-wracking. Yoongi hadn’t bitten his nails in years but he chewed on them now. He hadn’t been in battle without being in _Wings_ or without having Namjoon or Seokjin or Hoseok by his side _ever._ It was making him panic just a tad.

“Hey.”

Taehyung nudged him in the side, tugging Yoongi’s hands away from his mouth. “You’re going to ruin your pretty hands.”

Yoongi’s stomach flipped. Jimin was steadfastly ignoring them, eyes on the console. “Hold them, then,” Yoongi heard himself say, suddenly having an out of body experience, “so I have something to distract me.”

He’d been thinking about it since they’d been in his hair, Yoongi realized. It had been subconscious for the most part. He’d been wondering how they would feel in his own, wondering if the magic between them would spark if they had their tattoos activated, wondering if it would be as nice as he had been imagining.

It was better. Taehyung’s hands were warm and his magic thrumming under his skin and Yoongi never wanted to let go. “We’re going to kick ass,” Taehyung said.

Yoongi couldn’t look away. “Yeah. Yeah we are.”

Jimin cleared his throat. “They’re beginning to jump.”

Yoongi imagined the Block control room again.

( _I need Kyung! Is there a line of communication open to the Captains yet? Contact the Dragon!)_

“Ready when you are,” Jimin said.

Yoongi squeezed Taehyung’s fingers, grateful, and then they pushed their hands and their magic back onto the control panels. Jimin counted down and in a swirl of dark red, they jumped away.


	7. Chapter 7

They were carefully picking through a suspicious asteroid field in the Polaris Sector, eyes peeled for any sign of the Faceless base they were hunting, when they got the distress signal from the Block.

Namjoon had remained calm as Jungkook brought them out of the field to start a series of jumps back home, but he could see the tightness around the captain’s eyes and the twitch in his jaw. 

“Why would they be showing their hand?” Jungkook asked, even though deep down in his gut he thought he knew the answer.

“Maybe we forced it,” Seokjin said, his face as tight as Namjoon’s, “maybe us showing up at a base is a catalyst.”

“Maybe they’re returning bodies and Jiho fired on them in response.”

Jungkook’s stomach dropped in fear at Hoseok’s words.

“A Faceless ship showing up at the Block wouldn’t have to do anything but appear in order to get Jiho’s attention. But that doesn’t matter at the moment. Let’s focus on getting there so we can help.”

Their bulletproof tattoos were all activated. Hoseok and Seokjin had access to their weapon systems from the cockpit and Namjoon was sitting in the seat beside Jungkook making sure he had the Block’s strategy straight.

“I could do it in ten jumps,” Jungkook said.

“Let’s not push ourselves,” Namjoon said. “They’ll survive the extra minute it will take for us to get there. We’re all a little stressed; I don’t want room for errors.”

“Okay.”

“Yes, captain,” Seokjin scolded, and Jungkook corrected himself immediately. 

It was weird using titles, since they usually didn’t, but in stressful situations—in _battles_ —it needed to happen. The chain of command was essential while coordinating with so many other crews, especially since they didn’t usually work together. 

“Transport us outside the mine field. Jiho says there are too many ships swarming to ensure that our usual drop point is clear.”

Jungkook swore under his breath. There must be a lot of ships if they weren’t certain about mine field navigation. 

“ _You would not believe,”_ Jiho was saying over the comm, “ _some starsburned Faceless asshole had the_ gall _to fire a few shots_ —“

Namjoon counted down so they were all ready and Jungkook let his magic rip through him, dark blue swirling out from his piloting tattoos to fuse with the controls. He jumped as fast as Namjoon’s calculations scrolled across the screen and by the time they dropped outside the mine field the battle was in full swing.

Jungkook had never seen so many ships at the Block. He’d never seen so many _Faceless_ ships, period. Cruisers and fighters and one that looked like a barge two times the size of anything else, all of them pouring fire power at the Block and her captains.

“Put us in between that barge and the Block. I’m going to extend my shield.”

It’s not something Namjoon did often. It required a lot of strength and a lot of concentration. He was the only one out of the bulletproof that could expand the shield outwards to cover larger areas. The original Block itself had been built to the exact measurements of Namjoon’s protective bubble. 

It wasn’t a secret. Everyone knew he could do it, including the Faceless, which was why it was always a part of any massive Block strategy. _Wings_ always drew a lot of firepower because the enemy always tried to break them; they were a target that could not be ignored. Cracking the bulletproof shield would be bragging rights for the rest of eternity, but it also meant the ability to take over the Block. Namjoon was Jiho’s not-so-secret third level of defense that no one—magician or otherwise—had ever successfully brought to his knees.

“About. Starsburned. Time,” someone said across the comm.

Jungkook could almost hear Jiho start to breathe easy once they were in place, Namjoon’s silver magic slithering across _Wings_ and stretching out to encompass the Block, Hoseok and Seokjin firing back at anything peach colored crossing their sensors. Yoongi was the best at it but Seokjin and Hoseok held their own pretty well, calling out targets as Jungkook kept them at the front of the thickening battle, dodging explosions and hoping all the twisted metal belonged to the Faceless, not their allies.

“Cannons!” Hoseok warned.

The Block had several large ion cannons charged with excessive amounts of magic and energy. They were designed and overseen by Jiwon. Space had no sound, but from inside the Block they were deafening and a hit from one of them usually meant obliteration. He seemed to be focusing on the fighters for now and Jungkook stayed easily out of range by listening to Jiho shout upcoming target points over the comm. Of course, if a cannon did accidentally hit _Wings_ it wouldn’t hurt them, but it would knock them around a little and that would upset Kyung’s carefully planned battle positions. That was always a very bad idea.

Jungkook didn’t think about the overall battle too much. He was the pilot. He was responsible for moving them to where he was ordered, either by listening to Kyung through the comm or doing as Namjoon directed if Kyung was yelling at someone else. He watched the battle as he swung the ship around obstacles and positioned _Wings_ exactly for certain firing patterns. He paid attention to his surroundings in case of unforeseeable circumstances (there were usually quite a few in a battle this immense.) Everything went so fast, blurs of colors against the stars, and so at first, when he caught sight of the tiny, oddly colored Faceless fighter, he thought he was imagining things.

But then he saw it again, dipping wildly underneath a cruiser, and then again, out of the corner of his eye, a flash of mint green that was horribly (wonderfully) familiar. He spun the ship before he could tell Seokjin ( _Jungkook! I almost hit the_ Starlight _! You need to warn me!)_ and swore in shock as he watched the Faceless fighter jump through the mines unscathed, landing hits on _other_ Faceless ships.

“What the—what is that?”

It was definitely mint green. It was _Min Yoongi’s_ green. Jungkook would recognize it anywhere and his heart leapt into his throat. 

“Don’t hit that ship!” He swerved again, breaking out of the combat pattern and making Hoseok swear at him.

“What?” Namjoon asked, hands still on the comm board, tattoos active as he talked with Kyung and maintained his shield, “What are you doing, Jungkook?”

“ _Jeon Jungkook! What the fuck?”_ Kyung was screeching.

“The—that ship! The green one! It’s Yoongi!”

“What—“

“ _How do you know—_ “

“Look at the _color_ , Captain.”

“Jungkook, that doesn’t mean it’s him. The Faceless could have colored it to just throw us off.”

“He’s avoiding _all the mines._ They’re shooting at other Faceless!”

“Jungkook—“

But even as Namjoon spoke, the mint green Faceless fighter arced up over the huge barge and a shower of green color magic spread across it, words sticking to the peach metal— _hangul_ sticking to it. 

**THIS IS MIN YOONGI**

**THIS SHIP IS FULL OF PRISONERS**

Jungkook let out a breath in a whoosh of air, shocked. He angled _Wings_ so the text stayed in line with their view out of their magicked glass. A second later, Yoongi’s half of the bulletproof tattoo design followed. And then, another second later: 

**DON’T BLOW THEM UP DUMBASSES**

“Shit,” Namjoon swore.

“ _Crazy, starsburned—_ “ Jiho.

For a moment, there was nothing, and then more green appeared on the Faceless ships at the back. 

**THESE CAN BE DESTROYED NO GUILT**

A beat, and then:

**HURRY UP AND DO IT ALREADY YOU LAZY STARSBURNED SHITS WHAT IS TAKING YOU SO LONG**

Seokjin choked out a sob; Jungkook’s heart soared. That was definitely Yoongi.

**SORRY FOR SWEARING YOONGI SAID YOU WOULDN’T THINK IT WAS HIM OTHERWISE**

“ _Namjoon!_ ” Jiho’s voice cracked over the comm. It was a question, even if he was screaming it.

“It’s him,” Namjoon said, “Focus on the ones in the back like he said. We’ll sit in front of the barge just in case. We won’t let a single shot get by, I promise. Jungkook don’t stray a single inch from the flight patterns. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Captain.”

Yoongi was here. Yoongi was alive! He was free! Jungkook wanted to cry from relief but there were still a fleet of Faceless ships attacking, seemingly non-plussed by the strange form of communication taking place on their ships’ hulls.

Jungkook had a million questions but now was not the time to ask them. Now was not the time for useless chatter.

The barge was no longer firing. Jungkook matched its course, drifting back and forth between mines, but it didn’t spit any magic. Not a single shot was aimed at them…at anything.

“Yoongi disabled it,” Namjoon said, just as Jungkook reached the same conclusion.

_“How—“_ Seokjin started.

“ _Leave it,”_ Kyung’s voice came over the comm sharply, “ _Join the fight in the back and see if you can use your color magic to tell Yoongi to land that piece of crap on the Block and get in a ship I can communicate with. Right the fuck now.”_

Jungkook kept one ear out for the flight patterns and magical trajectories coming in over the comms as he accelerated _Wings_ and swerved them around the massive barge, easily avoiding all the fighters. 

“Get me close to Yoongi.”

A second after Jungkook dropped them at the back of the battle Yoongi’s mint green Faceless ship shot off towards the Block. Jungkook had no idea how Namjoon managed it, but communication had always been a strength of his, magical or not.

“Okay,” Namjoon said, “time to kick some ass.”

It didn’t last long. Yoongi’s arrival had re-energized the entire Block and by the time they’d blasted five Faceless ships into space dust it was clear they’d won. Jungkook wasn’t even sure if Yoongi had re-joined the battle because he’d been so focused on not straying from Namjoon’s orders again.

But it didn’t matter. They were one of the first ships to dock back at the Block and Jungkook knew exactly where Yoongi would be. He put the ship down so fast it wobbled (Seokjin sighing in resignation,) and was out the hatch of the _Wings_ in seconds.

Yoongi was leaning on the edge of a crate, grinning as Jungkook ran at him. His clothes hung off him awkwardly and the skin under his eyes was purpling but his hair was as vibrantly colored as always. He looked like Min Yoongi and, as Jungkook got his arms around him and lifted him off his feet, was pleased to discover that he still felt like Min Yoongi too.

“Hey, bun. That was some damn good flying out there.”

He _sounded_ like Min Yoongi. 

Jungkook didn’t want to cry. But holding Yoongi close (he really was thin, it wasn’t just a trick of the light,) breathing him in and seeing them there, _not dead,_ with no skin pulled from his body, was too much for Jungkook. “You’re _alive_.”

“Yeah. Heard you were tearing apart the galaxy looking for me.”

He _was_ Min Yoongi; Jungkook’s heart was going to burst.

“Of course we did.”

Carefully, suddenly feeling like Yoongi might snap in half, Jungkook lowered him to the ground; Hoseok, coming from behind, took Jungkook’s place, weeping. 

“You’re alive!”

Still trembling with emotion, Jungkook watched as Seokjin and Namjoon squeezed Yoongi between the both of them and Namjoon grabbed at his arms to examine them—belatedly, Jungkook noticed they were relatively empty. It was strange, seeing all that bare skin.

“I’ll break out that ink we’ve been saving,” Namjoon said, looking a little pale, “we’ll have you back to your old self in no time.”

“I’ve got plenty of ink don’t worry about that. Here, let me introduce you to some people.”

Two heads poked out from around a ship and two bodies followed, shuffling a little apprehensively, though one of them reached out to grab Yoongi’s hand like it was the most normal thing on earth. Jungkook waited for the stab of jealousy in his gut but it never came. Maybe his talk with Seokjin had really helped or maybe…maybe he was a little preoccupied staring at the third person hovering in the background.

Jungkook didn’t think that there could be a person more beautiful than Min Yoongi. But yet there he was, with faded pink hair and a shy little smile, making Jungkook’s heart flutter. How could such a man exist?

“I wouldn’t have been able to escape without them.”

“Then they’re welcome here,” Namjoon said. 

Jungkook barely registered the other man’s name (Taehyung, Yoongi said, and if Jungkook wasn’t so distracted he’d care about the tiny pink flush that spread over Yoongi’s cheeks) because he was too focused on _Jimin_. Jungkook rolled the name around in his mind before deciding it was perfect. Park Jimin was perfect. Jungkook wanted to engulf him in his arms and never let him go.

Seokjin cleared his throat. Jungkook blinked, realizing Park Jimin was holding out a hand for him to shake. 

Oh.

“Uh. Hi. Um.”

“This is Jungkook.” Yoongi elbowed him. “Take his hand, dumbass. He won’t bite.”

_You’re so pretty_ , Jungkook wanted to say, and was really, really pleased when he managed to swallow it down. He didn’t need to embarrass himself more. “Nice to meet you.”

Seokjin’s eyebrow was raised at him in a way that meant he knew _everything_ and Jungkook very deliberately turned away from him as Jiho suggested they all make their way to a conference room to debrief. But Seokjin being Seokjin, he found a way to wiggle himself through the throng of people crowding around Yoongi to welcome him back and loop his arm through Jungkook’s.

“You think he’s cute, don’t you. Wow, Mr. I’m In Love With Yoongi dropping him at the first sign of—“

“Oh my god shut up.”

“Mr. I’ll Rip The Galaxy Apart For Yoongi forgets that he exists pretty easy.”

“Be quiet,” Jungkook hissed. “I haven’t forgotten Yoongi. It’s not like that.”

“This is amazing. Wait until I tell Joonie. Wait until I tell _Hoseok._ ”

“Please don’t.” But it was no doubt a lost cause. Seokjin didn’t keep things from anyone unless it was a life or death situation; Jungkook feeling a tad bit of attraction towards Yoongi’s companions was anything but that…at least not yet. 

It took awhile to get through the market, even with Jiho there to glare at everyone getting in their way, but soon they were in a lift and rising up back to Jiho’s personal hangar bay. The Faceless fighter was there, still colored to match Yoongi’s hair. Wards were up around it and there were already several captains and other crew members crawling all over it. 

It was funny how things resolved. They’d been forced to give up a Faceless ship not too long ago but now here’s another one, a little banged up from battle, but intact nonetheless. 

“I want a good look at the ship this time,” Seokjin said, “I couldn’t fully examine the magical integration of the last one.”

“This one belongs to you,” Jiho assured him. “Yoongi gave the go ahead to anyone wanting to go through it. I can tell them to back off.”

“No, it’s fine. Just be sure none of them slink off with anything.”

“You had another Faceless fighter in here?” Yoongi asked.

“We’ve had a lot of fighters randomly popping in to say hello,” Jiho said, sighing.

Yoongi cleared his throat. “Ah. I should uh. Come clean on that front, I think.”

The observation room was clear of people as they stepped into it, and Jungkook found himself plopping into a seat beside Jimin with ease. Seokjin waggled his eyebrows as he went to sit on Namjoon’s lap and Jungkook decided it was high time he gave Seokjin the finger. It was incredibly satisfying.

“The uh…fighter that dropped in front of the Block right before the assault? That was us.”

The room froze.

“Excuse me?” Jiho asked. His tattoos rippled.

“We knew the fleet was coming but I’d lost the tattoos to change the Faceless communicator over to an Alliance one. I couldn’t remember it and we didn’t have time to experiment.”

“It was my idea,” Taehyung said. They were still holding hands. Jungkook knew he wasn’t the only one that noticed; Yoongi wasn’t really known for being publicly affectionate. 

“Yoongi said you had protocols in place to get the shields up and we were really pressed for time. And it worked, right? You had all your shields up and everyone in their defensive positions by the time the fleet arrived. And I didn’t exactly shoot anything, even though I could have. You all need to work on your response times.”

Every eye swung back to look at Jiho. His jaw was tight, posture rigid, tattoos glowing ominously, but then Kyung touched his arm and as if Jiho was exhaling tension, he relaxed. “It did work.” He cocked his head at Taehyung. “You’re going to fit in with us rather well.” He pointed at Yoongi, “As for you…we’re going to get those tattoos on you as soon as we’re done here. And then we’re going to have a briefing with all the captains to be sure no one else forgets. No ally is going to fire on me ever again.”

And with that, they began the debrief.

Jungkook listened as Yoongi talked about the work camp and being forced to draw tattoo designs and Taehyung assembling guns and Jimin mixing ink. “I still don’t know what they were doing with them,” he admitted.

“I think we have the answer to that,” Namjoon said, and told Yoongi about the strips of flesh they’d found with his tattoo designs on them. Yoongi looked about as sick to his stomach as Jungkook had felt.

“So what is this?” Jiho asked, “Are they still looking for Soul magic or is it just a quest to regain power? Or both?”

“Probably both,” Kyung said.

“As much as we don’t want to admit it,” Yoongi nodded, “everyone at that work camp was good at what they did; none of us were there by chance. They purposefully chose us for our particular skill.”

Yoongi’s skill Jungkook knew. Taehyung, going by the little tattoo gun he’d made, also made sense. It was of a genius level construction given the circumstances, and everyone in the room seemed to be deducing this as fast as Jungkook, if they hadn’t already. Which just left Jimin.

Taehyung was grinning as they all looked at Jimin, trying to size him up.

“Jiminie can make blood ink.”

Blood ink. Jungkook knew of it, of course. But he’d never seen it, never even heard of it being sold on the Block.

Jiho shoved a small glass container across the table, like he’d been expecting to have to use it. “Show us.”

Admittedly, Namjoon was a bit of a nerd when it came to the science of tattoos and magic. But whatever got him excited made Jiho and Kyung a tiny bit insane. Jungkook could see it sparking in the eyes of all three of them, fascinated as Yoongi extracted a small vial of Jimin’s blood and mixed it with water from a glass and a packet of powdered iron. And then he poured it very carefully into Taehyung’s tattoo gun.

“Are you _kidding_ me?” Namjoon asked. “That’s it?”

“Taehyung,” Yoongi held out a hand. 

Taehyung wiped his arm down and placed it in Yoongi’s hand. The gun buzzed as Yoongi carefully etched a design into Taehyung’s skin, one that Jungkook couldn’t quite see from his vantage point, and a moment later a ball of fire rose from Taehyung’s palm.

“ _Damn_ ,” Jiho whistled. 

“But…why did you use iron?” Namjoon asked, and Jungkook could almost see the wheels in his head spinning, “why is it fire if you used iron? Shouldn’t it be ash? Or charcoal?”

“It doesn’t matter. I could have used the dirt on the floor or the dust on those shelves. The tattoo works regardless.”

“All the time?” Kyung was tapping his chin.

“Everything I’ve tested works.”

“And there’s no side effects because of different blood types or anything?”

“Not that I’ve experienced. I think once the magic flares to life it doesn’t matter.”

“Interesting. Let’s try the bulletproof design,” Namjoon suggested, “Jimin, does your blood ink work on yourself? I see you have a few dead tattoos.”

For a moment no one spoke, Jimin shifting awkwardly in his chair and Yoongi scratching his head, like he wasn’t sure of his words. Taehyung cleared his throat.

“I…” Jimin started, slowly, “I’m not a magician.”

“You _are_ ,” Yoongi growled. 

Two full galactic cycles ago, Jungkook would have found it super attractive and been unable to look away. Now, he just found himself agreeing. Everyone had magic; Jimin just hadn’t found the right tattooist.

“I’m not. All the best have tried to ink me. It’s fine.”

Jungkook blinked. _All the best? I don’t think so._

“All the best?” Namjoon echoed, incredulous.

“Well, I haven’t tried,” Jiho said, “Namjoon hasn’t, Kyung hasn’t…has Yoongi?”

“No,” Yoongi said, “but we’re going to all try right now.”

“Let’s see if we can get Taehyung into the Bulletproof first,” Kyung suggested, “while I get a few more people up here to help with Jimin.”

As the last person to be added into the Bulletproof, Jungkook hadn’t experienced the process from the other side yet. Most of the Block had dead bulletproof tattoos on their skin, Jiho included. It was a masterful design and one that everyone wanted to attempt to integrate into their magic at some point. Namjoon and Yoongi were always willing to ink it but it couldn’t be forced. It had taken them several attempts on themselves to get it to function. The magic hadn’t worked with Seokjin until he’d married Namjoon. It hadn’t worked with Hoseok until he saved Yoongi’s life on a mission gone sour. It had connected perfectly with Jungkook after he’d intercepted that smuggled shipment of guns and saved Namjoon’s ass while he was on his honeymoon.

If Taehyung was as instrumental in getting Yoongi out of the prison as they said, Jungkook had no doubt he’d be the sixth successful Bulletproof initiate.

And he was right.

Yoongi coached him through activating it, all the different tiny little pieces that meshed together and it took all of ten minutes for the familiar looking shimmer to spread across Taehyung’s skin. He was _elated_ and Yoongi looked just as pleased, his gummy smile stretching attractively across his face as he watched Taehyung experiment with immense satisfaction.

But Jimin was another story altogether.

“Let us attempt a few things,” Namjoon said, “We might just be merchants, but we’re pretty damn good at tattoo design.”

They started small at first, a simple ball of light that almost everyone on the Block had. Yoongi tried, Namjoon tried, Jiho tried, Kyung tried. Jimin’s jaw was clenched against the pain and Jungkook, in a moment of bravery, reached out to hold his hand.

“This is dumb,” Yoongi said, and Jungkook knew that tone of frustration. He knew how disappointed he must feel. So few people ever rejected Yoongi’s standard designs.

Kyung’s reinforcements arrived just as then: Jiwon and Seungyoon, each of whom failed. Dean gave it a go, and then Yongguk. There were numerous attempts scattered up Jimin’s arm, each one making Jimin whimper in pain a little louder as the needle dug into his skin, blood beading up from them. Namjoon very carefully used a few instruments to scoop the blood up and into a container, every single drop considered precious. 

“You’re okay,” Taehyung said, who had come to sit on Jimin’s other side after Hanbin’s simple gun design hadn’t activated, “just a little bit more.”

Finally, Yoongi’s frustration rolling off him in waves, Jaebum was called up and he held his hands over Jimin’s skin, the useless lines of ink disappearing as he healed them.

“I told you,” Jimin whispered, “I told you it wasn’t going to work.”

Carefully, Jungkook reached up to wipe the tears that had gathered at the corner of Jimin’s eyes and rolled his sleeves back down to cover his bare skin. “Sorry,” he said, because he knew no one else in the room would apologize.

“I can go,” Jimin said, after the only people left in the room were Yoongi and Taehyung and Namjoon, “I don’t need to stay here. I won’t be able to do anything to help.”

“Don’t be _ridiculous_ ,” Yoongi snarled, “Taehyung and I would be dead without you.”

“Jiminie!” Taehyung sounded offended, “You’re super useful!”

“Don’t go,” Jungkook said—he still hadn’t let go of Jimin’s hand, “Just because you aren’t a magician now, doesn’t mean we can’t find something for you to do.”

“Even if it’s just giving us blood,” Namjoon said, “if you wouldn’t mind.”

“I don’t,” Jimin said, “you can have as much as you want.”

“Not all of it,” Jungkook frowned. 

Everyone laughed, but there was a little niggling sense of dread at the back of Jungkook’s mind. Jimin seemed like he deserved more than just being a glorified blood bag for the Block’s experimentation. No, Jungkook _knew_ Jimin deserved more than that. “We want you to stay.” _I want you to stay._

_“_ If the Block’s Golden Boy says you stay, then you stay,” Namjoon said, smiling. “We’ll find you some quarters. Both of you. You helped Yoongi escape, and even without the tattoo, we consider you one of the bulletproof.”

Jimin sniffed. “If you’re sure.”

Jungkook squeezed his hand tight. “We’re positive. Welcome to the family, Park Jimin.”

  



	8. Plan

There really was no place like home, terribly cliche as it might be: the sharp tang of magic and metal, the gentle rumble of machinery and ships, the sweet sight of friends and brothers. Yoongi hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it…missed _them_. It had been difficult to hold back tears with Hoseok sniffing in his ear and Jungkook in his arms and Namjoon and Seokjin holding onto each other to keep from crying themselves. It was still a lot, especially once other captains filtered in after the battle to welcome him back.

The Block usually liked to party after a win, but this felt different. This still felt ominous, and so there wasn’t a lot of raucous behavior afterwards. They were exhausted and honestly a little scared—such a massive Faceless comeback was never something any of them imagined. They’d won only by the skin of their teeth, after all.

“I want to show you around,” Yoongi told Taehyung, “but I really need to talk to Jungkook.”

“That’s alright,” Taehyung said, “all sorts of people have offered to give me a tour.”

“And the only offer you’re going to accept is Hoseok. Can’t have another captain trying to steal you away while I’m not looking.”

Taehyung laughed, his hand trailing down Yoongi’s arm to tangle with his fingers, the sparkle (but seriousness) in his eyes sending a shiver down Yoongi’s spine. “I couldn’t possibly walk away from you.”

“Is that so?” It was a miracle that his voice didn’t crack.

“I mean, you did successfully make me one of the bulletproof.”

“You never know. Jiho can be pretty damn persuasive. And like.” Yoongi swallowed. “There are a lot of very attractive people that live here.”

Taehyung was _looming_ , crowding into Yoongi’s space, and before he knew it, his back was pressed against a bulkhead. His chest ached from how hard his heart was pounding against it. It was getting difficult to breathe and he he had to open his mouth to get enough air.

“Take note of all the pretty boys, do you?” Taehyung asked, and Yoongi hadn’t realized he could get aroused just from the timbre of someone’s voice, but here they were. _You learn something new every day_.

“No one is as handsome as you.”

Yoongi’s eyes went a little crosseyed as Taehyung leaned in closer. “I should think not.”

It had been some time since Yoongi was last kissed. He wasn’t counting the cycles or anything, or even remembering the kisses fondly, but they hadn’t been like this. They hadn’t made his brain fuzzy or his body warm. They hadn’t turned his legs to jelly or made him want to beg for more. Those kisses seemed distant compared to this. Had those really even _been_ kisses? It didn’t matter, Yoongi thought, because now he had _this_.

He had _Taehyung_.

It was over too soon.

“I’m not going to say no to you,” Taehyung repeated. He sounded out of breath, his face flushed, fingers trembling against the cut of Yoongi’s jaw.

Yoongi licked his lips, cold from the loss of Taehyung and dry from a sudden gust of recycled air. “Good.”

And then the moment’s gone because something mischievous popped into Taehyung’s eyes and he’s saying, “Hey, if I activate the bulletproof tattoo right now could I feel you through a kiss?”

Yoongi shoved Taehyung’s shoulder, grimacing. “This was all a mistake.”

People started to pass them in the halls and as much as Yoongi wanted to pull Taehyung down to rekindle the heat that had been sinking into his body he couldn’t. The rumor mill on the Block was strong and it was best to not grind the wheel of his own accord.

“It’s an honest question.”

“Taehyung!”

“Can I float in space with it? _Is it like a space suit_? Please say yes.”

Yoongi could feel an oncoming headache and a sudden need to make sure Taehyung wasn’t allowed near any docking bays without supervision.

“No. It absolutely is not like a space suit…please don’t try it, Taehyung.”

“I have a lot of questions.”

“I’ll answer them. After we get a good night’s sleep.”

And after he spoke with Jungkook. Seokjin had been giving him a look that meant Yoongi had a lot of explaining to do. But he knew that. He’d known since he’d made the decision to put himself in between the Faceless and Jungkook that they’d have a few things to discuss.

Hoseok was waiting for them at Yoongi’s quarters and his eyes flicked down to their joined hands and then up to Yoongi’s face. “Wow. You’ve been busy.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You have color in your cheeks. And your lips! There is only one conclusion to draw.”

“Keep it to yourself,” Yoongi said, and squeezed Taehyung’s hand before heading off to find Jungkook. Hoseok would behave himself in front of Taehyung but with Yoongi present there would be no filter so it was best to hightail it back to the docking bay.

As he had expected, Jungkook was doing a thorough diagnostic of _Wings_ and taking notes to give Seokjin for repairs. They’d clearly been through a few fire fights since the last time Yoongi had been on the Block but it wasn’t that bad. Yoongi had definitely seen _Wings_ in worse shape.

“Hey, Jungkook.”

Jungkook dropped his data pad with a yelp, his magic sparking from the tips of his fingers in surprise. It was adorable, honestly. “Hyung,” Jungkook said, and held a hand to his heart.

“Sorry. Do you have a minute? We need to talk.”

They end up sitting at the edge of the dock, legs swung over, moored ships above and below them, the distant clang of workers from the bottom only just reaching their ears. Yoongi wished he’d thought to bring a bottle of alcohol but it was too late now.

“So,” he started.

Jungkook cleared his throat. “Taehyung seems nice.”

“He is.” Yoongi slides a little closer so he can elbow Jungkook in the side. “Jimin’s really nice too. You knew him for all of two seconds and you were jumping to his defense. It was good to see.”

“He was hurting.”

“Not just from the needle.” Yoongi wanted to say more about Jimin’s family and his home…but it wasn’t for him reveal. If Jimin wanted anyone to know he’d tell them himself.

Yoongi changed the topic before Jungkook could ask. “Jungkook, about what happened…”

“I’m sorry. I should have…I could have done so much more. I was stupid.”

“That isn’t true.”

“I was so wrapped up in…other stuff. My head wasn’t in the right place.”

“I need you to know that it wasn’t your fault.”

“But it was. I wasn’t fast enough. I didn’t…I froze up when they grabbed you. I should have—”

“Jungkook. Jungkook, we were unprepared and not at all ready to take that Faceless on in battle. And that decision is on me. It was also my call to make sure you got out of there alive, even if it meant my capture.”

“But—“

“Jeon Jungkook, we are both alive. We are both free. And I want you to stop feeling guilty. It’s not going to do either of us any starsburned good. Do you hear me? It’s time to move on. Besides, I never would have been able to meet Taehyung or Jimin if that hadn’t happened. We wouldn’t have known about all those bases. We caught them _preparing_ for war. That’s better than the Faceless being _ready_ for war. So enough of this moping. Okay?”

He’d feared this, of course. He’d _suspected_ it, for the most part. Jungkook had always tried to take on everything, _feel_ everything. And Yoongi wasn’t an idiot. Even if Jungkook hadn’t confessed, his crush had been blatantly obvious; Jungkook wore his heart on his sleeve and Yoongi had known that as he’d let himself get kidnapped. He’d known exactly how much it would hurt Jungkook. But it had been unavoidable and it had ended up working out for the best.

“ _Okay?”_ He pressed, after Jungkook was silent for too long.

“Okay,” Jungkook said. “But I wasn’t _moping.”_

“Whatever,” Yoongi sniffed. “Enough of this. We’re all together and much stronger and the past is the past.”

They sat quietly again, listening to a supervisor down below argue with a newly hired mechanic; the supervisor sounded dumb and every word coming out of his mouth was wrong. Yoongi had been avoiding Jiho but it looked like he might have to tell him about this.

“I’ll let Yugyeom know about the supervisor,” Jungkook said, and as Yoongi glanced over at him noticed his smile finally looked genuine.

“I didn’t even say anything!”

“You fired weapons at the Block. I’d want to keep away from Jiho after doing something like that too.”

The smile widened. Sometimes, when they bantered, Jungkook would get this far away look in his eye. He’d look like he wanted something he couldn’t have, like every conversation he and Yoongi shared caused him pain. But it wasn’t there now.

“Words aren’t always required. Your face says it all,” Jungkook poked Yoongi’s cheek. And oh. Okay. That’s how it was going to be, huh?

“I’m done with you.”

“That’s what they all say; you’ll find your way back to me. It’s inevitable.”

Inexplicably, Yoongi felt his throat start to close up, emotions swelling. He sighed, snaking an arm around Jungkook to pull him close. “Yeah. Yeah, I will always find my way back.”

—

Jiho convened his captains after they’d all had time to recover. Eye bags were still present and they were all sucking down liquid stimulant at an alarming rate, but their brain cells were firing again and that was all that mattered.

“So,” Namjoon said, as they headed towards the conference room, “any other interesting abilities either of you have that we might find useful?”

Yoongi was about to say no but he caught Taehyung’s eye, as well as the twinkle in it, and berated himself for not remembering Taehyung’s adept ability at making tattoos work without magic. “Actually, now that you mention it…”

Yoongi stopped Jiho from opening the conference room door with a hand to his arm.

“Show Taehyung the tattoo you have for unlocking the door.”

Jiho blinked at them a moment and then with a shrug, extended his arm, ink swirling as he rearranged the shapes on his skin so Taehyung could get a good look a them. He pointed to the correct design.

Taehyung ran a finger over Jiho’s entry tattoo for a few seconds, eyes going a little unfocused as he traced it. Then, seemingly satisfied, he walked up to the activation pad and began drawing patterns with his finger.

“Are you kidding me?” Kyung said, clearly having picked up on what was happening.

Yoongi tried very, very hard to not look too smug. It took a couple tries, but soon the door slid open and Taehyung stepped through, no alarms sounding, no impending footfalls of security.

“You…you figured out how the tattoo was drawn just by _looking at it_?”

“Usually it only takes one or two tries but I had to really think about that one. The design is really good, couple of tricky spots in the curves, I wasn’t sure which way you’d drawn them.”

Yoongi’s chest bloomed with warmth as Namjoon had to steady himself against Seokjin’s arm and Kyung was surprisingly unable to speak, mouth agape.

“I still don’t understand how that’s possible,” Jimin sighed.

“Don’t worry, Jiminie,” Taehyung said, “I’ll teach you. It won’t matter that you can’t get magic to work.”

“We are going to have a long chat after this,” Jiho said, pointing a finger in Taehyung’s face, “about how exactly you figured it out and how exactly I’m going to trust you to not walk into places you don’t belong.”

“I can only figure them out if you show me,” Taehyung said, “but alright. I look forward to it.”

The captains trickled in one by one, some with a few of their crew mates with them. Yoongi was pleased beyond words when Kihyun strolled in with Hyunwoo, and they spent the next few minutes catching up (all the while, Taehyung’s hand stayed firmly on Yoongi’s knee, even though he was deep in conversation with Namjoon about tattoos.)

Not all the captains attended but most of the ones present were Jiho’s big guns, including Yongguk, who had appeared from his work in mapping out uncharted space and Jisoo, who kept sending Hoseok meaningful glances across the table that meant neither of them would be available for socializing after the meeting.

“How many are we waiting on?” Jaebum asked.

“Just a few,” Jiho said, smiling. “Hanbin’s escorting them from the dock; they’ll be here soon.”

Yoongi couldn’t imagine who it was. Seungyoon was there, talking to Jiwon. Dean was napping with his head in Dahye’s lap. Hakyeon and Dujun were even present, without any complaint. It was a tiny miracle. And quite a few other merchants and crew members were tucked around the room, the buzz of conversation low and pleasant as they waited.

But it stopped abruptly as Hanbin stepped through the door and the _Dragon_ —as well as several of his top lieutenants—followed him.

Yoongi stopped breathing for a second. Should he stand? Should he _bow?_

“You all look like death,” the Dragon said, a smile pulling at the corner of his lips. “Sorry I wasn’t able to get here sooner.”

Someone let out a little wheeze and then the captains were up and out of their chairs, each eager to give up their seat. The only person that seemed unaffected was Dahye, who was still snoozing on Hyuk, even as he tried (and failed) to stand.

The Dragon sat beside Jiho, tossing his feat up on the table and ignoring Kyung’s glare. If anyone had the balls to say anything it would be him, but Jiho’s right hand man kept quiet, jaw twitching.

“So,” Jiho began, “we have a lot to discuss. Who would like to start?”

Namjoon stood without being asked and Yoongi settled back in his chair and felt brave enough to lace his fingers with Taehyung’s as they got comfy. Namjoon’s tale did not include a lot of the details he’d revealed earlier in the day to Yoongi—specifically where they’d gotten the map of the Faceless bases and how they’d known which ones to start searching first—but that wasn’t a surprise. Merchants didn’t always like to reveal their sources and there was enough mutual respect in the room to not need all of that information. They’d clearly been right, after all. It was hard to argue against the existence of a large Faceless fleet when they’d just been attacked by it.

And then Yoongi took over, explaining his capture, the prison, and escape.

“We need to inform the Alliance. I’m sure they’ve heard of the attack, of course,” the Dragon said, “but I think I’ll make a trip to the sector. They are bound to be some skeptics and we don’t have any time to waste. We need to coordinate and prepare. They’ll listen to me.”

“We need to talk to more than just the Alliance. We need to talk to _everyone_ and warn them.”

Dujun agreed to head back to Geode and Jaebum offered to take a ship to Prime. It would be a huge task but they had volunteers and connections in every sector and major space station aside from one.

“This just leaves us with Polaris,” Jiho said.

“We can go talk to Heechul,” Namjoon offered.

“Heechul’s influence with Polaris only goes so far. He rakes in cash for them and they’ll send an army if something happens to him, but they aren’t going to bother with the Faceless if it’s not them being hit. There’s a reason none of their people are here on the Block. We need to talk to a captain of theirs that’s been hurt by the Faceless and has enough influence in the sector to get them on our side.”

Polaris had been the least affected by the war. Rumors had circled that it was because some of the higher ups in their sector government had actually been Faceless, but there was never any proof of it, aside from them being mostly left alone and only offering aid if it was someone from Polaris that needed it.

“Unfortunately, the only other contacts I have in Polaris won’t help us,” the Dragon said. “Most everyone I know from there have migrated to other parts of the galaxy.”

It seemed to be a running theme. The captains knew a few people in Polaris—were friends with them, even—but not enough to push any sort of action in the government.

Finally, after seemingly exhausting all the Block’s options, Jimin spoke. Yoongi was so surprised it took him a minute to register the words coming from Jimin’s mouth.

“I…might know some people that could help.”

“What?” Yoongi said, flat.

“I’m sorry, what?” Taehyung asked.

“Uh…well, I lived on the edge of Polaris? I know of a group that…lost a few magicians to the Faceless. They took over a base. I’m good friends with one of them. I can talk to him. We just…have to go to them. They’ll ignore any communication they don’t recognize and unfortunately the way I had of contacting them was lost when…when I was captured.”

_Another_ unfortunate running trend, Yoongi thought. After this crisis was over he was going to have to sit down and invent a more universal method of space communication. Namjoon probably had a few ideas up his sleeve. It shouldn’t be so hard to just get people to talk.

“And they’re influential enough in Polaris to get shit done?” the Dragon asked.

“They know people,” Jimin nodded, “I can’t promise a lot but…they’ll listen to us, at least. Well, to me. And if they can’t help they’ll probably be able to point us in the direction of someone that can.”

“We’ll get you there, then,” Yoongi said.

The rest of the meeting they spent coordinating strategies.

“I don’t think we should wait to strike the Faceless,” Namjoon said, “and give them a chance to attack us again.”

“The ship I came back on has a lot of data and maps on bases,” Yoongi offered, “I think we can organize some strikes before they have time to fully regroup.” A good way to pretend the map the Block already had didn’t exist but still make use of its information.

He sat back after that, content to let the strategists assign tasks and coordinate their efforts. Taehyung recaptured Yoongi’s hand and held it in his lap, both of them checking out of the rest of the conversation in favor of finally having a moment in the last few months to just breathe.

Yoongi came out of his daze to Namjoon and Kyung agreeing to work on something together and Jiho ordering everyone to get some rest if they weren’t on the duty roster for that night. They’d have some sort of service for their fallen in the morning.

Then Yoongi was standing, hands still clasped with Taehyung and leaving a few captains talking behind him. He thought about Jimin for half a second but then saws Jungkook sliding up next to him and Yoongi stopped worrying. Jungkook would make sure Jimin had whatever he might need.

“They gave me quarters across from yours,” Taehyung said, “walk me there?”

Honestly, Yoongi was ready to sleep for ten days straight. But he took the long way there because he also didn’t want to let go of Taehyung’s hand. It was a dilemma.

“I’m so tired,” Taehyung sighed, “I want to sleep for days.”

_A man after my own heart_ , Yoongi thought, but said, “Me too.” Still, he didn’t take any shortcuts, unable to get enough of their interlocked fingers.

_I don’t want to let go. I don’t want to let go. I don’t want to let go._

But they could’t walk forever. They had to get where they were going. Taehyung looked at Yoongi with a smile that meant he knew Yoongi had delayed but didn’t at all mind.

Yoongi wondered if maybe they were going to kiss again—if maybe he should press in and take initiative—but Taehyung squeezed his hand and the moment (his warmth) was gone. Yoongi immediately missed it.

“If you need me—“ Yoongi started.

“You’re across the hall.” Taehyung already had a foot in his door. “Goodnight, Yoongi.”

“Goodnight.”

He wasn’t _exactly_ across the hall. Maybe like…ten meters to the to the left, but his heart was heavy and it felt like two thousand meters until he reached the doorway and slunk inside, sighing.

He was _grumpy_. But he was tired, and he knew he’d feel better after he slept.

The walls muffled a lot of sounds. It had been important, at the time, because the Block was running at all hours and was always noisy. So the quarters for crews had spells sunk into the metal to keep it quiet and at the time of their construction Yoongi had been pleased. It had been nice. But now…now it wasn’t. Now the quiet reminded him of the Faceless prison and the cold floor reminded him of cold cuffs and it didn’t seem like there were enough layers in the entire Block to keep him warm.

He contemplated getting back up and staying awake until he literally dropped but with unknown battles looming that seemed like a terrible idea. He contemplated wiggling his way into Hoseok’s bed, but with how he’d been eyeing Jisoo that also seemed like it wouldn’t be smart.

Yoongi was a believer in never putting things off so that meant, however unpleasant, that he had to try and fall asleep. But none of his usual methods seemed to be working, not even the sleeping pills he kept by his bed.

He was just about to get up and go find Jaebum to ask for magical help when there was a knock on his door and before he could speak it slid open to reveal Taehyung biting the inside of his cheek and clenching his fists.

He looked terrible. He looked like a totally different person than he had a few hours ago and Yoongi felt his insides squeeze in anxiety and red creep into his vision. He was going to mutilate whichever starsburned piece of crap made Taehyung like this.

“Taehyung?”

The door slid shut at Taehyung stepped through the bulkhead and Yoongi turned on the lights, pushing himself up off the bed and crossing his legs.

“I…I can’t sleep. I’m alone.”

Yoongi blinked, thought about it for a second.

“It’s cold,” Taehyung said, “and quiet. Like…”

“Like the prison,” Yoongi finished.

At least he wasn’t the only one. Taehyung looked a tiny bit relieved, as if he’d been embarrassed, as if he’d worried Yoongi would find it stupid.

Yoongi slid towards the wall, lifting up his blankets in invitation. Taehyung practically dove across the room and underneath them. Yoongi didn’t talk about the few tears clinging to Taehyung’s lashes or the tiny little hitch in his breath as he dug his nose into Yoongi’s neck and they wrapped their arms around each other, holding on tight.

“We went through a lot. _You_ went through a lot,” Yoongi said, “more than I did.”

They hadn’t really talked about their individual experiences, Yoongi basing his statement on the fact that Taehyung was held captive for a longer period of time, but the way Taehyung curled into Yoongi even more and his breath became shaky made Yoongi wonder about the things that had happened to him. Yoongi knew better than to ask. Another time, perhaps.

They laid quietly for awhile, Yoongi’s mind on the edge of sleep as warmth finally started to seep into his skin and there were other sounds in the room besides his own breathing. The tightness of their embrace loosened a little and the panic subsided—for both of them—their hands intertwined as they stared at each in the semi-darkness.

“I hope Jimin’s okay,” Taehyung said. “I went to check on him but he wasn’t in his room.”

“If he needs us he’ll come find us.”

There was a beat, and then Taehyung said, “or he’ll find Jungkook.”

And just like that, Yoongi knew Taehyung was feeling better. “You noticed it, too, huh?”

“His blush was difficult to miss. Is he nice? Will he be kind to our Jiminie?”

Yoongi waited for the guilt that usually came at the mention of Jungkook and his love life but it didn’t happen. Maybe it had been their talk or maybe it was just knowing that Jungkook could find other people attractive, but either way, Yoongi would take it. “Jungkook’s the best,” he said, pulling Taehyung in close to his chest. “Our Jimin is in good hands.”


	9. Obsession

They leave for Polaris the next morning. Repairs had been expedited on _Wings_ (there hadn’t really been damage, since Namjoon had gotten the shields up before the big hits,) and stocked for a trip (more tattoo guns and ink than food and drink.)

Jungkook was only a tad bit surprised to find out that Kyung would be going with them. He’d expected it to a certain extent, after learning that he and Namjoon had been up most of the night with vials of Jimin’s blood, testing tattoos on each other and sifting through the Block’s database on Blood Magic theory. Kyung coming along could only mean that they hadn’t gotten very far with their research and they were still too excited to put it aside until _Wings_ returned.

And _that_ meant that Namjoon and Kyung would need more of Jimin’s blood.

Jungkook knew very well he was outranked and his opinion wouldn’t be taken in consideration but that didn’t mean he couldn’t glare at them both whenever they asked Jimin for a few more drops. He was starting to look a little pallid and Jungkook was starting to weigh the pros and cons of mutiny. How did they not see they were making Jimin weak? How was he the only one?

Seokjin was piloting them to the opposite side of the galaxy, so fine, he was occupied. Hoseok…was busy. He’d shut himself in his cabin and there were suspicious flashes of light coming from underneath this door that Jungkook didn’t really want to investigate.

And Yoongi was with Taehyung. Taehyung was sweet. Jungkook liked him and was pretty sure they’d become good friends after he and Yoongi were done fumbling through the steps of a burgeoning relationship.

So that left Jungkook to glower next to Jimin as more blood was pulled from his veins and no one around him to help put a stop to it.

To his credit, Namjoon always asked to make sure Jimin was feeling alright. He made sure Jimin was eating, made sure he was drinking, and connected him to the computer in the med bay to monitor his condition.

Still, Jungkook felt nervous.

“It’s really fine,” Jimin said, once Jungkook mustered up the courage to voice his concerns, “It’s not like they’re draining me. I want to be helpful and this is how I can do it.”

“But—“

“It’s my decision, Jungkook. It’s cute that you want to look out for me, but I’m fine.”

Except, of course, Jimin wasn’t fine.

Jungkook wouldn’t ever, not in a trillion galactic cycles, want to say “I told you so,” over something so terrible, but when he woke to the sound of the med machines beeping like crazy and no one around to help, the urge to scream it (and punch something, some _one,_ ) was overwhelming.

But he didn’t because Jimin was slipping into unconsciousness and no one was there to fix it but Jungkook.

He was not a healer, not by any stretch of the imagination, but he was Bulletproof which meant he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. He was the Block’s Golden Boy, which meant he could do anything. And right now that something was saving Jimin.

Thankfully, he’d had the starsburned good sense to talk to Jaebum before they took off _just incase_ something went wrong.

Namjoon careened into the med bay after five minutes of Jungkook frantically hooking up IV lines and magical instruments and two seconds away from preparing to manually pump Jimin’s heart or shock him with magic if it stopped. Or both.

“What happened?”

“What do you think?” Jungkook snapped, a bit nastier than he had meant, “You took too much blood!”

Seokjin came through the door next and he _did_ have some medical training so Jungkook was happy to let him take over, Jimin’s vital signs steadying finally and his breathing regulating to something a bit more normal with the oxygen mask in place.

Jungkook was too exhausted to yell (and too young, too low in rank) so he slid down onto the floor next to the bed and watched as Seokjin rounded on his husband (and Kyung, who had appeared next to him,) and chewed them both out before shoving them out of the room and locking the door.

Jimin’s hand was clammy where Jungkook grabbed it and he found himself watching Jimin’s chest rise and fall with each breath to reassure himself that Jimin was alive. _He’s breathing, his heart is beating, his blood is circulating. He’s_ alive.

Seokjin sat on the floor next to him.

“Jungkook, I’m so sorry. I should have known. I should have…I should have listened to you. It won’t happen again. I promise.”

“It’s not your fault,” Jungkook said. “It’s not…it’ll be okay. He didn’t die. It’ll be okay.”

His other hand was taken and squeezed. “Yeah. And Namjoon will be sleeping in the damn cockpit until further notice.”

—

They were close to the coordinates when Jimin woke. He was still weak and barely able to move his pinky finger but he was _awake_. Jungkook stroked back Jimin’s hair and tried not to look scared as Seokjin hung another IV.

“I’m sorry,” Jungkook whispered, “I’m sorry I didn’t do better.”

“Not your fault,” Jimin said, “I chose this, remember?”

“You _did not_ ,” Jungkook said, vehemently, “you did not choose to give too much. It was _taken_ from you.”

“Don’t argue,” Seokjin said, interrupting what was definitely denial forming on Jimin’s lips, “this was unacceptable and is never happening again. No more blood donation until we get back to Jaebum and he gives the okay. Namjoon and Kyung are not allowed in here without supervision.”

“They wouldn’t purposefully—“

“I know,” Seokjin said, “I know that. I know my husband never meant to hurt you. I know he’ll never do it again. He can’t even blast a starsburned space slug off the side of _Wings_ without feeling guilty. He’s just—sometimes the magic takes over and he gets so in his head about it he forgets that other people exist. He might be captain but he knows better than to overrule me when I put my foot down. There are consequences, regardless of intention and one of those is he gets a babysitter and another is has to sleep in the cockpit, away from me.”

Jimin looked a little more relaxed, but he said, “you aren’t going to stop me from giving blood.”

“I am for the rest of this trip,” Seokjin said, “and if you don’t believe me go ahead and try it. See what happens.”

They held each others gaze a moment, Jungkook thoroughly cowed by the steel in Seokjin’s voice even though he completely agreed.

After a beat, Jimin nodded. “Okay. But only for the trip and you can’t be mad at Namjoon anymore. The cockpit isn’t comfortable.”

“We’ll talk to Jaebum when we get back and make some rules. I will…” Seokjin pursed his lips. “I will consider letting Namjoon out of the cockpit after we make contact with your friends.”

He put his hand in the one Jungkook’s wasn’t already holding and shook it since Jimin couldn’t move: agreement sealed. Speaking of which…

“We’re almost at your coordinates,” Jungkook said, “I don’t think you’ll be out of this bed in time to talk to them.”

“Probably not,” Jimin said. “You can go for me.”

“Uh.”

That was not the outcome he’d wanted. Not at all.

“It’ll be fine. You just have to show them the pendant I keep in my bag. The triangle one.”

Jungkook had seen it a few times and wondered what it was. He hadn’t asked, because Jimin was very private about his life before he’d been captured. “I’m not…what if I don’t have time to show them? What if they shoot first and ask questions later?” There were so many what ifs.

“They’re very nice,” Jimin said, frowning, “I don’t think they’d do that. But even if they _did_ , you’re bulletproof. It’ll be fine.”

“I’m not _invincible._ ”

Jimin rolled his eyes. “It will be _fine.”_

_—_

It was not fine.

Jimin directed them down to the planet, most of it barren and abandoned, and it was clear it had been ravaged by the Faceless war and never really given a chance to thrive again. His friend lived in the mountains and had a team of elementals he worked with, though Jimin had apparently only met a few of them. The structure they’d built was impressive, however, a rising hexagon made of stone that fit into the crags and cliffs in the range, but still not noticeable unless one knew its precise location. Jungkook could almost see the gears in Kyung’s head turning as he pulls out an imager and begins to take notes.

“I’ve made temporary communication tattoo design,” Yoongi said, as Jungkook rolled his sleeves up to accept the ink. “We’ll be able to hear you but you won’t be able to hear us. I’ve been trying to make it two way but haven’t had success.”

“One way is better than no way,” Jungkook said.

“Are you sure you want to go alone?”

“Jimin said it would be better. They’ll react poorly to a bunch of us, I guess.”

Jungkook suspected it wouldn’t make too much of a difference either way, but this was Jimin’s friend. They knew each other and so it would be fine. (He brushed aside the thought of _hopefully they don’t know each other too well._ A ridiculous reservation and none of his business.)

He reached into his shirt for the hundredth time to be sure the pendant was there.

“You’ve got this,” Yoongi said.

“Yeah.”

The pain of the tattoo gun barely registered and the moment it was complete Jungkook activated it, watching the strange shapes pulse.

“Testing?” He said into carefully, and heard his voice echo back to him from Yoongi own wrist. “Wow. Nice.”

“I don’t know if it will hold up for long. It might not even reach past the walls.”

“Half an hour.” Jungkook said.

It was the amount of time they’d agreed upon before he’d get out of there, contact or no and the amount of time Namjoon would wait before blasting his way in if he didn’t hear from Jungkook.

“Half an hour,” Yoongi echoed, “we’ll be waiting for you.”

They’d landed _Wings_ under an overhanging cliff a few meters from the entrance to the compound. The air is dry as Jungkook walks down the ramp and the twin suns the planet orbited extremely hot. But it’s easy to breathe and Jungkook trots across the cracked earth, eager to get inside.

The entrance is tucked unceremoniously in between two crags of rock. Without Jimin’s exact directions it would have taken Jungkook hours to find it. There was also no lock or bar to the door, as Jimin had said, and Jungkook breezed through it easily. “There’s other security,” Jimin had said, “but you won’t need to worry about it once you show them the pendant.”

Jungkook had wanted to walk inside holding the pendant in his hand but Jimin had pulled a face. “You’ll lose it. Trust me. Or it will break or melt because of the temperature. Just wait until you’re face to face. It’ll be fine.”

“I’m in,” He said into the glowing tattoo on his skin, belatedly forgetting he should probably update _Wings_. “Sorry. This place is huge.”

The ceiling of the cavern was so high the top of it is barely visible in the low light. But there were shorter walls, almost like a maze that had him zig zagging left and right trying to find a way forward. Snow and ice crystals blew in little whirlwinds, spinning Jungkook around and making him lose his direction. Other times he barely avoided a blast of hot steam bursting from small holes in the ground.

“Hello?” he called, “My name is Jeon Jungkook. I’m here on behalf of—”

A burst of steam explodes in his face and he barely manages to avoid it.

And then it started to get cold.

“The temperature just dropped.”

Even as he spoke, his breath came out in a fog, the air thinning like he was suddenly on a mountain. The earlier sound of water dripping from these stalactites turned into cracking and Jungkook watched the mist transformed into snow, the sheen of moisture on the walls and floor crystallizing and—

“It’s _freezing,_ ” Jungkook said, his teeth chattering, “what the—“

He had enough time to see a wall of white out of the corner of his eye before it slammed into him, his bulletproof tattoo catching the brunt of the attack which, as Jungkook dug in his heels and tried to see, was formed out of crystalline daggers, the ice so cold they were smoking, creating a haze that blew by him at a wholly unnatural rate.

Jimin was right. If he’d been holding the pendant it would be gone.

A second later the ice was gone and he was shoved into the side of the cave, a magician standing in front of him with a magical gun aimed at him, snow whirling around him, eyes the same ice blue color of his magic, mouth caught in a sneer.

Jungkook made a show of his tattoos, rippling them. The magician glanced down at Jungkook’s hands and then back up to his face.

“You’re one of Namjoon’s.”

Jungkook grinned, letting his head fall forward onto the tip of the gun. It was so cold it felt like his skin was burning. He ignored it, knowing his shield would protect him form any actual damage. “Why don’t you shoot me and find out?”

The magician didn’t even hesitate, matching Jungkook’s smile with one of his own as he pulled the trigger. The magic glanced right off Jungkook, the bullet made of ice ricocheting off to shatter on the wall behind Jungkook’s head.

“Huh,” the magician said.

Jungkook expected him to take a step back, to maybe reassess the situation which would give him time to fish around for the pendant Jimin had given him…but that didn’t happen. He was barely able to dodge the next attack (a sword of ice dropping suddenly from above,) and he used the bulletproof tattoos to block an attack from the side that would have trapped him as he moved out of the way.

“Wait,” Jungkook said, “I’m not here to—“

Apparently his identity or purpose didn’t matter because another wall of ice was slamming into him and exploding into tiny shards, like waves crashing against rocks, foaming white and creating spears that, were he not bulletproof, would have fallen and sliced through him like butter.

“Crap. I think I might need some help.” Jungkook said, hoping someone monitoring from the ship could still hear him. This was not going as planned. Not at all.

Certainly he could block attacks all day. He could withstand the blasts of ice and parry the swords and gun shots just fine. It was only difficult because this magician was good, one of the best Jungkook had ever encountered outside the Block, and although that in itself was not worrying, Jungkook was concerned about the temperature.

He could feel his body starting to slow, his fingers and feet slowly going numb at an unnaturally fast pace. His lips were probably blue. His entire body was shivering even as he contorted it to get out of the way of the magician’s blades and bullets.

The bulletproof tattoo did not block out temperature.

He had an out of body experience as he suddenly remembered Namjoon offering to replace his fire tattoo with something a little more geared towards providing his body with a manageable heat. Jungkook had refused in favor on working more weapons; boy had that been a starsburned mistake.

“I’m not Faceless,” he gasped, as five bullets bounced off his face.

“Don’t care,” the magician said, “you’re Bulletproof and we have an axe to grind.”

“ _What_? Look, I’m just here to—“

Parry, parry, block, flip. Jungkook landed a punch, shoving his attacker back with a magical burst of energy. “I’m here from the Block. Park Jimin sent me. He’s here. He wants to talk to Jongin!”

The magician’s laugh was derisive, like he couldn’t believe his ears and okay. Fuck this. Jungkook was done being nice. They were on a schedule. People were waiting for him. _Jimin_ was waiting for him. He let his shield do its thing and focused on staying upright and getting the pendant out of his jacket.

The fact that this magician was only using ice was telling. Jungkook was pretty sure he knew who this was, knew which group of magicians this was, and that meant he had to end it here and now or he wasn’t going to survive. He didn’t want to admit it, but Jungkook wasn’t far from freezing to death.

It also meant Namjoon and Yoongi were going to be pissed Jimin hadn’t warned them in advance about the identity of this particular group of magicians. But one problem at a time.

His fingers brushed the cool metal and Jungkook expanded the shield to give his arm room enough to hold the pendant out in front of him.

Tiny pin pricks of sharp, icy death whooshed against the shield, looking for a weakness, even the ground beneath his feet frosting over, wondering if maybe he wasn’t protected there.

And then it stopped, the crystals thinning and held in the air like a snowstorm hanging in time.

Jungkook blinked and suddenly there was another man in front of him, black smoke swirling around him a moment before it dissipated into the cold air.

“How did you get that?” The man pointed at the pendant.

“Jimin gave it to me. He’s—“

“Jimin’s moon was destroyed. He’s not longer alive. Tell me the truth or the ground is going to open up beneath your feet and crush you thousands of kilometers below the surface—I doubt your bulletproof magic will be able to withstand that.”

It probably could; Jungkook was pretty sure. The problem would more likely be he’d get stuck and die of starvation under this planet’s crust…but he wasn’t about to point that out. He would still be dead.

“Jimin was captured by the Faceless,” Jungkook said, trying to keep his teeth from chattering, “but escaped with another Bulletproof member. He wasn’t on the moon when it was destroyed. He’s very weak from blood loss so he couldn’t come off the ship. I came instead.”

The magician did not look convinced.

“Look,” Jungkook said, “if we can get out of here you can see for yourself. And if I’m lying you can crush me. You win, either way.”

The magician’s eyes narrowed. “Wait here.”

Black smoke burst forth and the man was gone. The ice magician had disappeared as well, though the crystals of death still hung in the air and Jungkook kept his shield up, unwilling to take any chances.

A moment later they were both back, this time with a third man in tow. He was shorter than Jungkook but definitely older, blue water tattoos wrapped around his arms in thick lines and wavy designs: exceptional work. If he survived this Jungkook wanted at least one of them.

“Is Namjoon with you?” He asked.

“Yes. In the ship.” _Waiting for me to contact them_ , Jungkook didn’t add. They were probably trying to find him.

The man grinned and the tattoos on his arms flashed, water pooling at his fingertips to form a gun. “Okay. Lead the way. I have some _words_ for him.”

_—_

The moment they were out in open air Yoongi and Namjoon descended on them—cloaks billowing, tattoos glowing. Some of the tension eased from Jungkook’s shoulders. He was not going to be trapped inside a planet and die of starvation. Oh, sweet relief.

“Jungkook,” Yoongi said, “are you hurt?”

“Nothing major.”

He slid in beside them easily, though he seemed to be the only one, the air tense as they all sized each other up, squinting.

“Namjoon,” the man with the water tattoos said, “It’s been awhile.”

“He said you knew each other,” Jungkook offered.

It took a beat and then Namjoon’s eyebrows raise in recognition. “Joonmyun?”

Joonmyun turned to Jungkook. “He blew up my ship. You _both_ did,” he added, looking to Yoongi.

“That was a long time ago. And I paid you back. Actually, if memory serves, I bought you an even _better_ ship.”

Joonmyun shrugged. “Still doesn’t mean I have to like you. Or forget it. We liked that ship.”

“We apologized. _Groveled_ , even.”

Another shrug.

“So we hold grudges. Get over it,” the ice magician said, “what are you even doing here?”

“To warn you. And ask for your help.”

The ice magician scoffed.

“ _Minseok_ ,” Joonmyun sighed, “Please. We’re all trying very hard not to kill each other right now. Look. Namjoon. I’ve heard the Block has been going through a lot the past few months. I’m sorry, really. But even out here we are still part of Polaris. We take our orders from them.”

“Just come aboard. Come and look at our schematics and the things we found.” He turned to Jongin. “Come and talk to Jimin. You don’t have to make any promises. Just listen.”

“I’m not comfortable going aboard your ship,” Joonmyun said.

“We aren’t here to hurt anyone.”

“Respectfully, Namjoon, I don’t know that. I don’t really trust the Block. If I’m going to be honest, I don’t trust you, regardless of your affiliation with Jimin. He’s Jongin’s friend and for all we know you’re using him.”

And that’s the last straw for Jungkook. Jimin had been through enough. He didn’t need this magician doubting him.

“I’ll stay here while you talk,” Jungkook said. He was crazy. Minseok the ice magician would probably freeze his body and crack it like an egg the moment Yoongi and Namjoon left, but it was a risk they needed to take. It was a risk that was worth it, if it meant hurting the Faceless... _defeating_ them. “I’ll even take down my shields.”

“You will _not_ ,” Yoongi growled.

“I will,” Jungkook said, “once Jongin’s aboard. So if something happens you can hurt me. And Namjoon will also stop shielding _Wings_ so Jongin can teleport you out if he feels the need.”

“Jungkook—” Namjoon started.

“I accept,” Jongin said. “Hyung,” he added to Joonmyun, “it’s more than fair. Let me talk to Jimin. Please.”

Joonmyun’s eyes flicked from Namjoon to Yoongi to Jongin, weighing his options. Not even a minute passed before he nodded. “Fine.” He gestured broadly, tattoos snaking around his wrists as water formed at his fingertips, dripping onto the ground. “Lead the way.”

—

They stayed in the ship for an hour. After the first five minutes of mutually agreed upon silence, Minseok went back into the hexagonal compound and did not reappear. So Jungkook sat on the ground watching the suns set. It had been awhile since he’d seen a sunset, maybe a full galactic cycle or so, and even longer since he had actually enjoyed one. With _two_ suns, it made for a picture Jungkook knew he’d never forget. The colors were so vibrant Jungkook wished he had an imager or even some painting tattoos to capture it.

Joonmyun and Jongin disembarked with only Namjoon following them. Jungkook stood gingerly, dusting off his clothes and hands.

“All good?”

“Yes,” Namjoon said.

Joonmyun stopped in front of Jungkook, crossing his arms again. “You fought against Minseok well, especially considering you weren’t trying to kill him like he was you. In a few years, you might be able to beat him. The cold is difficult to withstand.”

“I’ll figure something out for that,” Jungkook said, “and I’ll come back. Rematch.”

Joonmyun’s smile was wry. “I’ll tell him you said that. Good luck, Jeon Jungkook.”

The elementals nodded to Jungkook and Namjoon and then in a cloud of black smoke, vanished.

“They’re going to help?”

“They’ll send someone to Polaris but they made no promises about anyone listening. It’s all we could ask. He did, however, give us a name of someone to visit who might be of more use.”

“In Polaris?”

The ramp slid shut behind as they walked up it, the engines already whirring with Seokjin’s magic. “In Legend space,” Namjoon said, “A…friend of theirs.”

“A friend.”

Namjoon put his hand on Jungkook’s shoulder and gave a smile that was all too familiar, one that meant Jungkook would not be getting any more information until later, if at all. “Get some rest Jungkook. You did well, today.”

“A friend,” Jungkook mutters, as he walked towards the med bay. “Yeah, right.”


End file.
